‘Law & Order: SVU’ star Mariska Hargitay was raped by a friend in her 30s: ‘trauma fractures our mind’
Fox News
"Law & Order: SVU" star Mariska Hargitay wrote an essay revealing she was raped by a friend in her 30s. She hopes to change the way people talk about victims of sexual assault.
"He was a friend. Then he wasn’t," she continued. "I tried all the ways I knew to get out of it. I tried to make jokes, to be charming, to set a boundary, to reason, to say no. He grabbed me by the arms and held me down. I was terrified. I didn’t want it to escalate to violence. I now know it was already sexual violence, but I was afraid he would become physically violent. I went into freeze mode, a common trauma response when there is no option to escape. I checked out of my body."
Hargitay also wrote that she "couldn’t process it. I couldn’t believe that it happened. That it could happen. So I cut it out. I removed it from my narrative. I now have so much empathy for the part of me that made that choice because that part got me through it. It never happened. Now I honor that part: I did what I had to do to survive."