John Stamos wrote within the pages of his upcoming memoir, “If You Would Have Told Me,” a babysitter sexually abused him when he was a young boy.
Stamos opened up about the alleged assault during a recent interview with People. He admitted he had suppressed the traumatic memories until he dug deep into his emotions to write his book.
“It took me writing a book” to realize what happened, he said. “I mean, I knew, it was always in the back,” he said. “I felt like, I remembered it slightly. It has always been there, but I packed it away as people do, right?”
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Stamos said he didn’t tell anyone about the alleged assault and was confused about what happened and whether or not he was supposed to do anything about it.
“I think I told myself, like, ‘Ah, it’s girls, man,'” he told People.
He described the abuse and his initial response to being victimized.
“It was like you’re playing dead so they’ll stop. But it wasn’t totally aggressive,” Stamos told People.
“I don’t know. It was not good,” he said.
The famous actor noted the traumatic memories came flooding back when writing an acceptance speech for his advocacy of abused children.
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“I started to write it, and that’s when it really came out,” he said.
Stamos said he put his emotions aside to focus on the children and the task at hand. He didn’t want to shift focus onto himself.
“And then I thought, ‘No, tonight is not about me. It’s about the kids. I’m going to pack it away again until the right moment,'” he told People.
“I didn’t want the headlines to be that, and I didn’t want the book to be over that.”
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“It was a page or something, but I felt I had to talk about it. It was weird. It was something that, I think, I was probably like 10 or 11 [when it happened],” Stamos said. (RELATED: Julia Ormond Sues Harvey Weinstein For Sexual Assault)
“I shouldn’t have had to deal with those feelings.”
“If You Would Have Told Me” is slated for release October 24.