After going public with with her past sexual assault in 2018, Connie Chung further discussed the incident in her new memoir.
“I was sexually molested by our trusted family doctor, but what made this monster even more reprehensible was that he was the very doctor who had delivered me on August 20, 1946,” Chung, 78, wrote in Connie: A Memoir, published on Tuesday, September 17.
Chung was in college at the time. Because she “had advanced to the so-called heavy petting stage” in relationships, Chung made an appointment to get “protection from pregnancy.”
Chung noted that she had “never” had a gynecological exam before and didn’t know what to expect.
“Not understanding or knowing what he was doing, I stared at the ceiling. With his right index finger, he massaged my clitoris. Simultaneously he inserted his right middle finger in my vagina,” she recalled, adding that the doctor — who has since died — was “coaching” her through the assault.
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“Suddenly, to my shock, for the first time in my life, I had an orgasm. My body jerked several times,” she continued. “Then he leaned over, kissed me, a peck on my lips, and slipped behind the curtain to retreat to his office area. I did not say a word. I could not even look at him.”
After Chung went public with her story in October 2018, she received a call from one of her sisters who had also been assaulted by the same doctor.
“Sometimes I wonder if that incident served to toughen me up so that I could handle any blatant sexual situations,” she wrote. “I was no longer naïve in that department.”
Ahead of her memoir’s release Chung spoke with Us Weekly exclusively about how she went through “a catharsis” when writing the book.
“I realized that I had to really sift through stuff that I didn’t necessarily want to live through again,” she admitted to Us. “I discovered that the original source of the word catharsis was a medical term, and it was expunging your body of unwanted waste. I realized that I was really expunging my body of that waste that I didn’t want to have anything to do with. At my age, all I want is a good bowel movement. So, there I was saying to myself, ‘Oh, this feels really good just to spill it.’ Get it all out.”
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She also went to “voracious reader” and husband Maury Povich for inspiration about writing a memoir. He recommended Personal History by famed Washington Post publisher Katharine Graham.
“One of the things I didn’t want to do was to be woe is me,” she explained, noting that she and Graham went through the same experiences in the news business.
“She was never woe is me, and I was rooting for her right until the very end,” Chung said. “I thought, that’s what I want to do. There’s no crying in baseball — there’s no crying in news. I think I came out the other end quite whole.”
Connie: A Memoir is out now.
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
