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/ Source: TODAY & # 39; HUI
By Scott Stump
Betty DeGeneres, Ellen DeGeneres' mom, speaks for the first time about her daughter's claim that Betty did not believe her when Ellen said she was sexually assaulted by her late stepfather while she was a teenager.
Ellen reveals the details of the abuse and how she affected her relationship with her mother in an emotional interview with David Letterman for an episode of her show on Netflix, "My next guest must be presented without any introduction" , which was released on Friday.
Betty DeGeneres, 89, who has often invited her daughter's daytime talk show over the years, responded to Ellen's interview with Letterman in an exclusive statement provided to NBC News by Ellen.
"I know now that one of the most difficult things to do is to speak up after being sexually abused," Betty said. I love my daughter and I would like to have the ability to listen to her when she told me what happened.
"I live with this regret and I would not want it for any other parent.If anyone in your life has the courage to speak, please, believe it."
Ellen, age 61, had already been addressing Savannah Guthrie TODAY in October about her sexual assault when she was a teenager, but declined to go into details at that time.
She revealed details during the interview with Letterman, claiming that the abuse began at the age of 15, after her mother was diagnosed with breast cancer and had a mastectomy. She added that her father-in-law had used this information to sexually assault her.
"He told me when she was in town that he had felt a lump in his chest and that he needed to feel my breasts," she told Letterman. "Whatever it was, he convinced me that he needed to feel my breasts, then he was trying to redo it another time, then another time.
She ended up having the courage to tell her mother a few years later, but said she did not believe her.
"He said I was lying, then she stayed with him," she told Letterman. "That made me angry."
Ellen also explained how this decision affected her relationship with her mother to this day.
"I should never have protected her, I should have protected myself and I did not talk to her for a few years, and then I told her," she said. "And then she did not believe me, then she stayed with him for another 18 years.And finally, she left him because he had changed the story so many times . "
Ellen has a relationship with her mother, but recognizes the difficulties.
"I had not really let him reach me until recently, I went there:" I would have liked to be better taken care of. " I would have liked her to believe me. "And she apologizes, but, you know," she said.
DeGeneres was first brought to reveal his violence during an episode of his broadcast aired in October after university professor, Christine Blasey Ford, testified before the Senate about the violence. allegations of sexual assault lodged against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The actress and talk show host Busy Philipps evoked in Ellen's show her inspiration inspired by Ford's testimony, revealing that she had been raped at the age of 14 which led DeGeneres to talk about his own traumatic experience.
She developed this revelation in her interview with Savannah a few days later.
"As a victim of sexual abuse, I am furious with people who do not believe it and who say: 'How do you not remember exactly what day it was?' ? ", She said. "You do not remember these things – what you remember, is what happened to you, where you were and how you feel, that's what you remember."
Ellen hopes to empower women by telling her own story.
"I love men," she told Letterman. "But there are so many men who come out so much, it's time for us to express ourselves, it's time for us to have power."
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