TV personality Valerie Bertinelli has revealed that she was sexually abused at age 11 in her new book, and says she never planned to share as much as she did.
“I had no plans to reveal this,” Bertinelli, now 65, told People in an interview published Wednesday. “This was going to be a book about teaching people how to love themselves. I did not know that I would go this far.”
Bertinelli’s book, “Getting Naked,” will come out on March 10. Discussing the process of writing about her abuse, she explained, “I guess because I’m healing from it, it’s not so scary anymore. I can say it out loud. I was sexually assaulted. It doesn’t feel like it owns me anymore.”
While writing the book, Bertinelli said, she explored “the parts that I thought were shameful and come to find out they’re not. They’re all kinds of different facets of what makes us who we are.”
Bertinelli purposely opened the chapter where she discusses her abuse with a photo of herself at age 11 “because that was the little girl that was sexually abused,” she said.
“It boggles my mind that this little girl was taken advantage of that way. It boggles my mind because it’s still happening … and I’m furious about it. And we need to start speaking up and saying, ‘Enough.’”
Bertinelli said the decision to go public with the abuse was a 10-year process.
“The very first time I said it out loud to my therapist, I thought I’m going to feel better now. It got worse before it got better,” she explained. “I maybe ate a little bit more, drank a little bit more.”
“When you stop eating things for comfort, stop drinking alcohol, it exposes your feelings. You can deal with them or not. And I chose to deal with them. I don’t feel shame about it anymore. I’m pissed off that it happened. Nobody deserves that.”
In January 2024, Bertinelli went viral after she took to Instagram to address online mockery of her gray hair and her use of filters in a “PSA” video.
She said things came to a head that year after she had “a huge anxiety attack” that made her realize she needed to focus on herself ― especially her long-held self-criticism and shame over her body.
“All of that shame had nothing to do with my body,” she told People. “It was just something to take out my shame on. My poor body. I was so mean to it. I just needed to get all those voices out of my head. As I was going through that, I’m thinking people are going to wonder, why do I have so much self loathing?”
Last May, Bertinell shared another Instagram post in which she acknowledged she had just experienced “some of the most emotionally excruciating eight months of my life” while adding, “I don’t know that I would change any of it.”
As for that 11-year-old girl in the picture that begins the harrowing chapter of her new book, Bertinelli said she “loved to color, read, play with my Barbies and ride my bike around the block. I loved my cats. I was just a little girl.”
Now, she is something more: “I’m a survivor.”
Read the full interview here.
Need help? Visit RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Online Hotline or the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s website.
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