Tatum O’Neal Details The Years Of ‘Emotional And Sexual’ Abuse She Suffered As A Child

She’s opening up. Actress Tatum O’Neal became the youngest person to win an Oscar at ten years old back in 1974, but even though she achieved lots of success as a child star, she also experienced a lot of heartbreaking instances of sexual assault and abuse as a young child. After opening up about all of the years of sexual assault and abuse she suffered as a kid, Tatum revealed more details in a new interview with The Mail on Sunday.

Tatum, 54, said that her parents — late actress Joanna Moore and Ryan O’Neal — struggled with alcoholism and addiction in her early years, and that made Tatum susceptible to the type of assault and abuse she suffered. 

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“When your parents are off getting drunk or high, they are not watching what happens to their children,” Tatum told The Mail on Sunday. “I suffered years of abuse, both emotional and sexual.”

Tatum went on to reveal just a few instances where she was abused: she was once assaulted by a friend of her father’s, and one of her mother’s boyfriends tried to rape her. She also detailed some of the abuse she went through in her 2004 autobiography A Paper Life, where she said she was molested by her father’s drug dealer when she was 12 years old and she was also molested by a family acquaintance at just six years old.

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She opened up about her experience with sexual assault and abuse in a recent Instagram post, showing her support for Dr. Christine Blasey Ford, who accused United States Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh of sexually assaulting her when she was 15 or 16 years old and who was also allegedly mocked by President of the United States Donald Trump.

“To see the president of US mock a woman, let alone a sexual assault victim,” Tatum wrote in her caption. “We’ve sunk to a depth of depravity that I never thought the president of the United States could ever sink to you.”