[Warning: Potentially Triggering Content]
John Stamos is opening up like never before in his upcoming memoir, If You Would Have Told Me. Perhaps the most shocking and upsetting section details his past with sexual abuse.
In the pages of the book, he reveals he was sexually assaulted by a babysitter when he was just a kid. Opening up about the abuse in an interview with People on Wednesday, he said “it took me writing a book” to realize just how inappropriate the female sitter’s alleged actions were. He shared:
“I mean, I knew, it was always in the back, and I do so much advocacy for the [survivors]. I felt like, I remembered it slightly. It has always been there, but I packed it away as people do, right?”
Oof.
Related: John Almost Quit Full House After Being Upstaged By Jodie Sweetin!
At the time, the Full House star “didn’t tell” anyone about what had happened, telling himself instead, “like, ‘Ah, it’s girls, man.'” He recalled:
“It was like you’re playing dead so they’ll stop. But it wasn’t totally aggressive. I don’t know, it was not good.”
“Playing dead”? Oh goodness. So terrible.
Interestingly, John first reflected on this traumatic experience when he was writing an acceptance speech for an award he won for his advocacy work for abused kids. He noted, “I started to write it, and that’s when it really came out.” But he ultimately decided this wasn’t the right time or place to share the experience:
“And then I thought, ‘No, tonight is not about me. It’s about the kids. I’m going to pack it away again until the right moment.’ Otherwise, I’m a phony f**k. It’s like, ‘Come on.'”
He added:
“I didn’t want the headlines to be that, and I didn’t want the book to be over that. It was a page or something, but I felt I had to talk about it. It was weird. It was something that, I think, I was probably like 10 or 11 [when it happened]. I shouldn’t have had to deal with those feelings.”
10 or 11! No, absolutely not!
One reason he’s speaking up now is because he’s a father to a 5-year-old son, Billy, with his wife Caitlin McHugh Stamos, noting:
“But I’ll tell you, if I found out someone was doing that to my son that’s a totally different story.”
We commend him for speaking up, and for all his advocacy work in this area, too!
It sounds like his book is going to be a very raw look at his life, which he described as turning into “a human story” versus the “hero story” he first set out to write, adding that “it was hard” to be “a hundred percent forthcoming” at first. We bet! You can read more when the Big Shot star’s book is out in full on October 24. Thoughts? Let us know (below).
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence and would like to learn more about resources, consider checking out https://www.rainn.org/resources.
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