Demi Moore has written about one of the most traumatic incidents she faced as a teenager in her upcoming memoir, Inside Out.
Ahead of the book’s release, the Ghost actor spoke with Diane Sawyer about being raped when she was just 15, by a man who paid her mother after the incident was over.
In a clip from the Good Morning America interview published on Monday, the presenter says in a voiceover that Demi was “taken by her mother to bars, so that men will notice them. She’s 15 when she comes home one night and an older man they know is in the apartment with the key”
“She writes, ‘It was rape and a devastating betrayal,’ revealed by the man’s cruel question, ‘How does it feel to be whored by your mother for $500?’” Diane added in the video.
After the clip played, Diane asked the actor if she believes that her mother sold her.
“I think, in my deep heart, no. I don’t think it was a straightforward transaction,” Demi answered, seemingly with tears in her eyes. “But she still did give him the access. And put me in harm’s way.”
In the interview, the pair also touched on Demi’s mother’s multiple suicide attempts.
During a heartbreaking interview with Lena Dunham for Harper’s Bazaar, published earlier this month, Demi recalled one of the times when she was still a child that her mother attempted suicide, and she had to to save her.
She revealed: “Something very deep inside me shifted then, and it never shifted back. My childhood was over.”
Demi herself has been candid about her struggles with addiction, and told Lena Dunham that she became sober again after losing her sobriety in her 40s.
“In retrospect, what I realised is that when I opened the door [again], it was just giving my power away,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “I guess I would think of it like this: It was really important to me to have natural childbirth because I didn’t want to miss a moment. And with that I experienced pain.”
She said that “part of being sober is, I don’t want to miss a moment of life, of that texture, even if that means being in — some pain”.
Useful helplines and websites:
- Victim Support - Visit victimsupport.org.uk or call 0808 168 9111 Sexual Abuse Referral Centres - Find a SARC
- Rape Crisis - Visit rapecrisis.org.uk or call 0808 802 9999 The Rape and Abuse Line - Visit rapeandabuseline.co.uk or call 0808 800 0123 (answered by women) or 0808 800 0122 (answered by men).