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Actress Pamela Anderson revealed a horrifying history of sexual abuse during a speech at the Cannes Film Festival this weekend. Anderson was speaking at the launch of her new animal rights charity, The Pamela Anderson Foundation. According to a transcript of her speech
on her website
, she began by saying it might be "the time to reveal some of my most painful memories. At the risk of overexposing myself again... possibly being inappropriate again, I thought I might share with you events that in surviving drove me to this point right now."
She went on to say that she was molested as a child by her female baby-sitter from age 6 to 10. She was later raped by the 25-year-old brother of a friend's boyfriend when she was only 12. In the 9th grade, she said, her first boyfriend "decided it would be funny to gang rape me with six of his friends. Needless to say, I had a hard time trusting humans. I just wanted off this earth."
Anderson said that though her parents were loving, her father was an alcoholic and her mother was a waitress, working two jobs and always crying. Because her mother was so depressed, Anderson said she couldn't "bear to give her any more disruptive information," so she kept her abuse to herself. This is the first time Anderson has revealed these parts of her past.
Her painful childhood led her to develop an affinity for animals and a desire to protect them. When Baywatch gave her the opportunity to have a platform to speak, she contacted PETA for information about any animal issues so she could raise awareness in her interviews. Anderson spent the next two decades advocating for animal rights, including encouraging Russia to stop importing seal products.
