Padma Lakshmi recalled painful memories in the wake of sexual assault allegations against Brett Kavanaugh.
“When I was 16 years old, I started dating a guy I met at the Puente Hills Mall in a Los Angeles suburb,” she wrote in the New York Times on Tuesday.
As Lakshmi, 48, shared, she began dating a 23-year-old man, who also worked at the same mall. “We were intimate to a point, but he knew that I was a virgin and that I was unsure of when I would be ready to have sex,” she said. “On New Year’s Eve, just a few months after we first started dating, he raped me.”
She says they had returned to his apartment after a night out and she fell asleep.
“The next thing I remember is waking up to a very sharp stabbing pain like a knife blade between my legs,” Lakshmi recalled. “He was on top of me. I asked, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘It will only hurt for a while.’ ‘Please don’t do this,’ I screamed.”
“I didn’t report it,” she said. “Not to my mother, not to my friends and certainly not to the police. At first I was in shock. That evening, I let my mother know when I was home, then went to sleep, hoping to forget that night.”
But looking back on her life, Lakshmi recalled yet another assault – this time by a family member.
“When I was 7 years old, my stepfather’s relative touched me between my legs and put my hand on his erect penis,” she writes. “Shortly after I told my mother and stepfather, they sent me to India for a year to live with my grandparents. The lesson was: If you speak up, you will be cast out.”
The “Top Chef” star says she’s been thinking of her experiences since two women have come forward accusing the Supreme Court nominee of sexual assault.
Lakshmi tied her story back to President Donald Trump, who questioned why the women kept quiet about their alleged assaults.
“I have nothing to gain by talking about this,” Lakshmi added. “But we all have a lot to lose if we put a time limit on telling the truth about sexual assault and if we hold on to the codes of silence that for generations have allowed men to hurt women with impunity.”