Pamela Anderson, the blonde bombshell who shot into the hearts and minds of millions of men (and some women) thanks to her stint as a red-swimsuit-clad lifeguard in legendary 90s TV show Baywatch, and more than an occasional feature in Playboy’s glossy-sticky pages, has spoken about the sexual abuse she suffered throughout childhood.
Speaking in Cannes (yep, right near the film festival) at the launch of the Pamela Anderson Foundation, she later put the speech onto her blog. In it she details three harrowing stories of abuse she suffered as a child.
First, she claims she was abused from ages six to 10 by a female babysitter, was raped by a friend’s boyfriend’s 25-year-old brother when she was 12, and, in Grade 9 (aged 14 or 15), her then-boyfriend ‘decided it would be funny to gang-rape me (with six of his friends)’.
She didn’t tell any of her family about the abuse at the time; her mother worked two jobs to support the family and was ‘constantly crying’ because her alcoholic father ‘didn’t always come home, leaving us in tremendous pain.’ As she put it: ‘I couldn’t break her heart any more than it was breaking.’
Instead, Pamela said she sought solace in animals, which is why the foundation she’s set up isn’t directly to do with child or sexual abuse, but more about the vegan PETA-ambassador’s fondness of animals. ‘I had a hard time trusting humans; I just wanted off this earth. My affinity with animals saved me – they came to me naturally.’
She explained that, owing to her fame, people listen to what she has to say: ‘We have changed animal welfare laws all over the world and over the last 20 years I have spoken to parliament, kings, queens. I’ve had the ear and admiration of people like Castro and crazy enough, Putin. There must be a way to use this for good.’
Thanking her sons and her husband Rick Saloman (the one whom she’s married twice, and who, um, made that sex tape with Paris Hilton), she also introduced Vivienne Westwood to the podium to do a speech on animal rights and got her guests to play backgammon, which, weirdly, was exactly the game the 25-year-old taught her to play ‘which led into a back massage which led into rape.’
Strange. But we suppose there are many different ways of turning abuse into a positive thing though, right?
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Picture: Corbis
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.