Mena Suvari Reveals She Was Sexually Abused as a Child

Mena Suvari is getting very candid.

The 42-year-old American Beauty star opened up about her memoir, The Great Peace, in an interview with People.

“Between the ages of 12 and 20 I was the victim of repeated sexual abuse,” she sadly revealed.

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She said the abuse began in the sixth grade when she was raped by one of her older brothers’ friends.

“No, I don’t want to do that,” she recalls herself saying in the book, adding that he raped her at his family house just before she turned 13.

“Part of me died that day. He used me, had fun with me, and then disposed of me. He called me a whore. I never got to have a healthy expression of [sex]. My choice was lost. And that, compiled with already not feeling seen and heard, established a concept that I would have of myself. That that was my value,” she said.

“I turned to any form of self-medicating I could find, just to get by. I was just trying to survive.”

She then said she met a man at age 17, who also sexually abused her throughout their 3-year relationship.

“I remember thinking maybe this is how relationships are: the screaming, the name-calling, the abuse. I felt like I had brought it all on in some way. From KJ to Tyler, it was a process of destruction.”

Through therapy and the support of friends, she was able to cut substance out of her life and create healthy relationships. She married Mike Hope, whom she met on the set of the Hallmark movie I’ll Be Home for Christmas in 2016.

“It was the first time I felt I wanted to have a family with someone. I found out I was pregnant when I finished writing the memoir,” she said. Find out more about their first child they welcomed earlier this year.

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