Vanessa Williams Releases Memoir, Confesses She Was Molested

For years, Vanessa Williams has been known for singing, dancing, acting, and being the first African American to be crowned Miss America. In her upcoming memoir, titled “You Have No Idea,” she speaks about everything from winning the title of Miss America, to having to give it up after nude photos of her were leaked. She also shares a part of her life that the public was unaware of. When she was 10 years old, Vanessa was molested by an older, female, family friend. Of the incident, she told People,

“She told me to lie down on the rug. I was confused. ‘Are we going to play a game?’ As I tried to make sense of it, Susan pulled down the bloomers of my cotton baby-doll pajamas. ‘What are you doing?’ I asked. ‘Don’t worry — it’ll feel good.’ I lay there paralyzed. What was I going to do?”

Vanessa went on to tell how Susan told her not to tell anyone about it, so she kept it a secret until college. She also admitted that she didn’t even realise that what had happened to her was considered molestation . On how it affected her:

“After that trip I felt something change in me. I had always been defiant but I became a bit more rebellious. I began to pull away from my parents… I didn’t really understand until college. I was with my boyfriend and it hit me and I blurted out: ‘Oh my god — I was molested.”

That incident was the predecessor to her trying marijuana and getting pregnant later on, before she began her pageant life. On how she deals with it now, Vanessa said,

“[It] didn’t paralyze me, and I don’t dwell [on it]. I was verbal about it [with my kids], so they knew what to look for.”

Her book hits shelves on April 17th.

[ABC, HuffingtonPost]

-@Kami2Kute