Vanessa Williams is opening up about the sexual molestation she suffered at the hands of an older woman when she was just 10.
“At that young age, having that happen to you, in your body, it awakens your sexuality at an age where it shouldn’t be awakened,” the actress, 51, said on the latest episode of “Oprah’s Master Class.”
According to the former Miss America, the trauma occurred on a trip with family friends to California when she was just a girl. One of the members of the traveling party, an 18-year-old woman whom the younger Williams admired, came into her room and molested her.
She wasn’t old enough to know what was taking place, but she knew that it wasn’t something that was supposed to be happening.
“At 10 years old, I had no idea what it was, but I knew it felt good,” Williams said. “And I knew I shouldn’t be saying anything, and I didn’t tell anyone. But I knew it felt good, but also something that was not supposed to be happening.”
Although Williams wanted to tell her parents what happened when she got back to New York, she never got the chance, as her father’s brother had just died.
“That was a family drama. Never really talked to my dad about it … and kind of suppressed it,” she said.
She noted that the incident has had a long-lasting impact.
“Had that not happened in my life and had I had an opportunity to have a normal courtship with a boyfriend at 16 or whatever and have your normal first kiss, there wouldn’t have been that shame that was always haunting me,” she said. “It made me more sexually promiscuous and more curious at a younger age than I should have been.”
Williams has previously written about the molestation in her 2012 memoir, “You Have No Idea.”