Tyler Perry Reveals Abuse, Molestation on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’
By Bridget Bland on Oct 21st 2010 12:12AM
Filed under: Television, News, Interviews, Celeb Updates
As the first African-American to own his own movie studio and recently ranked the second most powerful man in Hollywood by Forbes magazine, Tyler Perry seems like he has a charmed life. But despite his increasing fame and fortune, the celebrated black filmmaker is still battling demons from his past.
The ‘Madea Goes To Jail’ star/director sat down with his dear friend Oprah Winfrey on her Emmy Award-winning daytime talk show to talk about his troubled childhood and the molestation and child abuse he endured in his youth.
Perry said since his mother died on Dec. 8, 2009, it has given him strength to speak openly about his past.
“It has everything to do with my mother’s death and I could not be a source of pain,” he said. “I knew if I spoke about it she would be hurt, but now that she is gone, I feel this tremendous sense of now is the time for me to take care of me.”The 41 year-old New Orleans native said that his father was physically and emotionally abusive, berating him and beating him with vacuum cleaner cords, and “hated [him]so much” the he “could never understand why.”
“I felt like I died as a child,” he confided to the media maven, who counts herself as one of his closest friends.
Going to church with his mother helped him get through the hard times at home, he added. “My mother was truly my saving grace, because she would take me to church with her. I would see my mother smiling in the choir, and I wanted to know this God that made her so happy. If I had not had that faith in my life, I don’t know where I would be right now.”
Still, Perry tried to commit suicide by slitting his wrists.
Though he admitted to currently financially supports his abusive father, the two men have no father-son relationship.
In addition to being abused by his father, Perry revealed he was molested by three men, including a neighbor, male nurse and church member, starting at the age of five years old and also by a woman.
“I knew that I liked the little girls in the neighborhood,” he said, adding, “but this man kept doing something to me and my body kept betraying me.”
The sexual molestation Perry endured as a young boy hindered his ability to get close with women and he said that he’s only had five serious relationships.
“Every woman helped me to realize something to do with what happened. I was so awkward which made women think ‘What’s wrong with this guy?'” he told Winfrey.
He thanked Winfrey for inspiring him to write down all of the things that happened to him before he became famous.
“I started using character’s names and through these dead years, I started to search my soul,” he shared.
“On behalf of the millions of people who cannot sit here with you, I want to say thank you on behalf of all of them and myself. I didn’t want these 25 years to end without you knowing that,” he said.
On Nov.5, the same day Perry’s tenth feature film ‘For Colored Girls’ hits theaters, ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ will invite a studio audience of 200 abused men to share their stories of molestation as boys.
