Add Alex Winter‘s name to the list of silence breakers who have come forward with stories of abuse.
Winter is best known for his role Bill S. Preston, Esquire to Keanu Reeves‘ Ted “Theodore” Logan in the Bill And Ted films, but he has been an actor since he was very young — he even made it to Broadway by 12 years old.
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It was during these formative years in the 1970s during which, Winter told BBC Radio 5, he was sexually abused by an unnamed man who he says is now dead.
In his first interview on the subject, Winter says he never told anyone because he was too afraid:
“It was absolutely taboo in the popular vernacular, so I didn’t feel I had any place of safety to unlock an extremely sensitive and potentially dangerous secret. Because there is a power dynamic that does put you in a position where you’re afraid for your own safety. So there’s that, on top of the taboo nature of being public.”
He also says the #MeToo movement might have changed everything for young Alex:
“That’s the vital importance of what’s going on at the moment… If you feel like these sorts of things are now being spoken about in a much more accepting and open way on a societal level, it gives you a lot more freedom to tell, just, anybody. Because usually you’re telling anybody. I mean nobody. And that’s a very dangerous place to be in mentally.”
The actor, who has graduated into filmmaking himself, directing the documentaries Downloaded and Deep Web, says it was ultimately acting in the welcoming environment of the Bill And Ted films that helped him start to deal with his PTSD for the first time:
“I didn’t realize it, but it was very important. I was in a pretty dark place around that time because I had just been going and going and going, and I hadn’t stopped. You know, I just barreled through the rest of those shows, I barreled through college. I just hadn’t really paused and that’s a recipe for disaster if you’re carrying that kind of trauma. So, it was an opportunity to pause and just be some place safe and sweet and fun and childlike.”
Adding:
“The problems aren’t going to get sorted out overnight, because frankly, these issues are part of the fabric of human nature, and they’ve existed since there have been human beings walking around on the planet. So it’s going to take time, it’s going to take mental health work, it’s going to take the capacity of society to listen to some very unpleasant truths about itself. And there’s no doubt that that’s going to take time.”
See a clip of Winter talking about the abuse and his silence (below):
You can hear the entire interview HERE.
[Image via MGM/Guillermo Proano/WENN.]
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