Valerie Bertinelli is speaking up for the first time about the sexual abuse she allegedly experienced at age 11.
“I guess because I’m healing from it, it’s not so scary anymore,” Bertinelli, 65, told People on Wednesday, March 4. “I can say it out loud. I was sexually assaulted. It doesn’t feel like it owns me anymore.”
Bertinelli noted that she previously “had no plans to reveal this” until she started working on her upcoming memoir, Getting Naked, which will be released on March 10.
“This was going to be a book about teaching people how to love themselves,” she said. “I did not know that I would go this far.”
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Instead, Bertinelli wanted to share the “raw truth” in her book. “It’s about getting naked with who I am, emotionally, physically,” she continued. “It was really about getting to the nitty gritty and getting to the parts that I thought were shameful and come to find out they’re not. They’re all kinds of different facets of what makes us who we are.”
Bertinelli ultimately “purposely” chose to include a picture of herself at 11 in the chapter detailing her alleged abuse, explaining, “Because that was the little girl that was sexually abused. And it boggles my mind that this little girl was taken advantage of that way.”
She added: “It boggles my mind because it’s still happening — and I’m furious about it. We need to start speaking up and saying, ‘Enough.’”
While Bertinelli is now in a place where she can address the trauma, she faced challenges along the way.
“It’s taken me 10 years at least,” she shared about the decision to come forward. “The very first time I said it out loud to my therapist, I thought I’m going to feel better now.”
Bertinelli said “it got worse” for her “before it got better,” adding, “I maybe ate a little bit more, drank a little bit more. When you stop eating things for comfort, stop drinking alcohol, it exposes your feelings. You can deal with them or not. And I chose to deal with them. I don’t feel shame about it anymore. I’m pissed off that it happened. Nobody deserves that.”
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As Bertinelli was putting in the work, she faced yet another obstacle.
“I had a huge anxiety attack at the end of 2024 that brought me to my knees,” she recalled. ”And I thought, ‘I’m not getting anywhere.’ I needed to do more work.”
Bertinelli addressed the “shame” she felt about herself for years, which she ultimately realized “had nothing to do with my body.” She explained, “It was just something to take out my shame on. My poor body. I was so mean to it. I just needed to get all those voices out of my head.”
She continued: “As I was going through that, I’m thinking people are going to wonder, why do I have so much self loathing? That’s not normal. It’s because trauma happened in my childhood for the most part. I can’t speak for anybody else, but it’s pretty textbook.”
When asked what she was like at 11 years old, Bertinelli replied, “I loved to color, read, play with my Barbies and ride my bike around the block. I loved my cats. I was just a little girl. … I’m a survivor.”
If you or anyone you know has been sexually abused, call the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).
