In an essay for People, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit actress Mariska Hargitay revealed she's a survivor of rape.
The Emmy-awarding winning actress, 59, shared her experience about an assault that happened when she was in her 30s. "A man raped me in my 30s. It wasn’t sexual at all. It was dominance and control. Overpowering control," she wrote in the essay. "He was a friend. Then he wasn’t. 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."
Hargitay, who founded the Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004 to help survivors of sexual and domestic violence, said that she "checked out" of her body during the assault because she was "afraid he would become physically violent." Initially, she admitted that she "couldn't process it" and "couldn't believe that it happened." For a long time she "cut it out," but she's decided to share her story in hopes of helping other survivors deal with their assaults.
"I occasionally had talked about what this person did to me, but I minimized it," she wrote. "My husband Peter remembers me saying, 'I mean, it wasn’t rape.' Then things started shifting in me, and I began talking about it more in earnest with those closest to me. They were the first ones to call it what it was. They were gentle and kind and careful, but their naming it was important."
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As she noted, she's previously not described herself as a survivor of sexual violence, but now she's "able to see clearly what was done to me." Her work on Law & Order and seeing the impact it has had on other survivors has been "a source of strength" for her, she added.
“I said for a long time that my hope was for people to be able to talk about sexual assault the same way they now talk about cancer,” she wrote. “Tell someone you’ve survived cancer, and you’re celebrated. I want the same response for sexual assault survivors. I want no shame with the victim. The shame of the act belongs with the perpetrator: They’re the ones who committed the heinous, shameful act.”
In an interview with The New York Times in 2019, she reiterated her desire to mirror the efforts of her Law & Order character Olivia Benson. "I’m more engaged now than ever, and I was pretty engaged when I started this,” she said. “It turned me from sort of actor to activist.”
