Melissa Benoist really is a superhero.
The Supergirl star did something far braver than flying into space or punching robots on Wednesday. She opened up about the domestic violence she suffered at the hands of an ex.
In a powerful 14-minute Instagram TV video, the 31-year-old describes a long relationship in which the controlling behavior and physical abuse grew worse over time.
Related: R. Kelly Alleged Sex Slave Opens Up About Abuse
She says the problems began as jealousy; he would make her change into less attractive clothing when they went out, got upset when she spoke to other men, and looked through her phone. Romantic scenes at work were a whole other problem…
“Work in general was a touchy subject. He didn’t want me ever kissing or even having flirtatious scenes with men, which was very hard for me to avoid, so I began turning down auditions, job offers, test deals and friendships, because I didn’t want to hurt him.”
She didn’t want to hurt him. Ugh.
Then the physical abuse began.
[Trigger Warning: Domestic Violence]
“The first time it happened, he threw a smoothie at my face. It smacked my cheek and exploded all over the floor and the sofa. I ran to grab paper towels, rushing back because I was so worried about cleaning the couch than the fact it was all over my face, my hair, my clothes, and that my cheek was painfully throbbing. I was more worried about the furniture than about the fact I had just been abused.”
She says over the course of the relationship this happened more and more:
“I learned what it felt like to be pinned down and slapped repeatedly, punched so hard I felt the wind go out of me, dragged by my hair across pavement, head-butted, pinched until my skin broke, slammed against he wall so hard the drywall broke, choked.”
She describes “vivid” memories of him crying “self-hating tears” after these beatings, how his “heartfelt” apologies would bring them back to normal. Though she admits now that “deep down” she never believed he would really change.
Eventually there was an incident so bad, it changed everything. Melissa cracks as she describes it…
“And then he threw something at my face again, only this time it was significantly worse. It was a blow to my face with his iPhone. The impact tore my iris, nearly ruptured my eyeball, lacerated my skin, and broke my nose. My left eye swelled shut, I had a fat lip, blood was coursing down my face and I can remember screaming at the top of my lungs…
Something inside of me broke. This was too far.”
She had to tell someone. So when a friend asked her for the truth about the injury, she finally let it out.
Then she told more people. She gathered her strength, but it took time. She explains:
“Leaving was not a walk in the park. It is not an event, it’s a process. I felt complicated feelings of guilt for leaving and for hurting someone I had protected for so long, and yes, mournful feeling of leaving something familiar. But luckily, the people I let in, the more I was bolstered, I never lost the sense of clarity that kept telling me, ‘You do not deserve this.'”
As difficult as it was, she knew immediately it was the right thing to do:
“Breaking that cycle was the most rewarding, empowering choice I’ve ever made for myself.”
And now she wants to pass the message on. As she wrote in her post caption:
“By sharing my story, hopefully I can empower others to seek help and extricate themselves from abusive relationships. Everyone deserves to be loved void of violence, fear and physical harm.”
See the entire story (below):
Melissa never names her abuser in the video. But she gives far too many clues to hide his identity.
It didn’t take long for fans to come to their own conclusion, convinced the person she’s describing has to be Blake Jenner — who immediately began to trend afterward.
We cannot confirm the speculation, but the case fans are laying out is pretty reasonable.
First, she mentions the abuser being younger than she is; of her longterm relationships, the 27-year-old former Glee star is the only one we know of who fits that description. She was linked to photographer Nick Vorderman from 2008 to 2012, and he’s six years older. Then she was with Blake from February 2012 until they filed for divorce in December 2016. She started dating Chris Wood three months later, and they’re now married (he’s six months older than she is btw).
The other big piece of the puzzle is the eye injury. Surely we would have heard of what she describes in the video at some point, right? Well, fans are convinced we did.
In the video she describes how she and her abuser came up with a story to tell people about tripping on her deck and hitting her face on a potted plant.
She told that story on The Tonight Show in March 2016. She was still with Blake at that time.
https://twitter.com/vintagevlogs/status/1199795508010790915
And in an E! News article from May 2015 (entitled Supergirl’s Melissa Benoist Is So Adorable Talking About the First Time She Put On Her Superhero Costume), the actress describes her reaction to seeing herself in the cape for the first time. She says:
“I just had this injury so I had this eye patch on. It was kind of embarrassing.”
If this is the same eye injury, that puts the incident some time shortly before the period from January to March of 2015, from when she was cast to when principal photography on the pilot began.
She was still very much with Blake at that time.
Sadly, if fan speculation is true, that also means the divorce announcement came nearly two whole years after the eye injury. Melissa says in the video leaving was “a process” but that is so scary and heartbreaking to think about.
Again, we must emphasize we can in no way confirm the identity of Melissa’s abuser, but we will say this: we absolutely believe her.
[Image via FayesVision/WENN/Melissa Benoist/Instagram.]
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