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Gloria Estefan revealed during Thursday’s episode of Red table: Les Estefans, titled “Betrayed by Trusted Adults,” that she was sexually assaulted as a child.
Sitting next to daughter Emily Estefan and niece Lili Estefan, the music icon began: “93 percent of abused children know and trust their abusers, and I know that because I was the one of them.”
Her niece said as the three ladies held hands, “You’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.”
Gloria replied, “I did it” and continued, “He was family, but not close family. He was in a position of power because my mom put me in her music school and he immediately started telling her how talented I was and how much I needed special attention, and she felt lucky that he was focusing that kind of attention on me.
She added that the abuse “starts little by little and then it goes fast”.
“I told him, ‘This can’t happen, you can’t do this.’ He says: ‘Your father is in Vietnam, your mother is alone and I will kill her if you tell her,’ ”recalls Estefan. The singer said she knew she was not responsible for the actions of her attacker, but she feared he would hurt her mother. She pretended to be sick to avoid going to music lessons.
Emily asked if Gloria’s mother knew about the abuse. “No, mom, because first of all, we didn’t talk about it at all during his lifetime,” she replied. “And then my father was in Vietnam. I remember sending him tapes saying, ‘Daddy, really not, I prefer to sing songs and I don’t want to do classical music.’ “
The show played audio recordings from tapes of Gloria talking with her father about her music lessons.
Former Bachelorette Clare Crawley has joined Red Table Talk: The Estefans.
Aysia Marotta
Gloria remembered the early morning when she disclosed the abuse to her mother. “Then the police came and said, ‘This is what’s going on,’ Gloria said. “And they told my mom not to press charges because they said I was going to suffer worse trauma than having to stand up.”
She continued, “And that’s the only thing I feel bad about knowing that there must have been other victims.” Her attacker, who she said was considered a “respected member of the community”, wrote to a newspaper years later, criticizing her music after her first hit, “Conga”.
“At that point, I was so angry that I was about to blow everything up. And then I thought all my success was going to turn into him, ”she explained. “It’s this manipulation and control. But that’s what they do. They take your power.
Gloria said she had previously only spoken about the abuse to her family and even the producers of the show were unaware that she was planning to share this story.
The Estefans then presented the first Latina Bachelorette, Clare Crawley. In July Crawley shared a post on Instagram and in the caption she said she was “a child sexually abused”.
After reading the entire legend to the Estefans, Crawley provided more details about his abuse: “I think I was right around five or six. I was in first grade. most important to me going to school was that I was just painfully shy. ”
“I grew up in a Catholic school and was the victim of a predator,” Crawley said, Gloria adding the man was a priest. “My parents looked at Catholic priests as – they had them on a pedestal. “
The former Bachelorette added, “The Catholic school treated him like a counselor. My parents did their best and took whatever resources they could at the time and sent me to see this priest, and I don’t think there was any advice given – it was a one-on-one time to be a predator. “
In recounting her story, Crawley added that she was “not a victim, but a survivor”.
Watch the full episode here.
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