Jane Fonda has revealed that she was once raped and said that she always thought "it was my fault".
The actress and fitness guru said she was sexually abused as a child and believed for years it was because 'I didn’t do or say the right thing’.
Miss Fonda, 79, said that the experience led to her to becoming a feminist and an activist for women’s rights. She has previously revealed that her mother was sexually abused as a child before eventually committing suicide when Miss Fonda was 12. But it is the first time she has disclosed her own traumatic experience.
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It came during an interview with actress Brie Larson, the star of the Oscar-winning film Room, which is about an abuser who kidnaps a mother and her child. Miss Fonda said: ‘To show you the extent to which a patriarchy takes a toll on females; I’ve been raped, I’ve been sexually abused as a child and I’ve been fired because I wouldn’t sleep with my boss and I always thought it was my fault; that I didn’t do or say the right thing.’
Miss Fonda has frequently spoken out about women’s rights and supports the V-Day movement, which works to stop violence against women and girls. In 2001 she set up the Jane Fonda Centre for Adolescent Reproductive Health, which aims to help prevent teen pregnancy.
Miss Fonda told Miss Larson, 27, she wanted to help abuse victims realize that rape and abuse ‘is not our fault’ because ‘we were violated and it’s not right’. She said: ‘I know young girls who’ve been raped and didn’t even know it was rape. ‘They think, It must have been because I said “no” the wrong way.’
Miss Fonda has previously told friends that she believes her mother, New York socialite Frances Ford Seymour, was sexually abused by a piano tuner when she was young. According to Miss Fonda the ordeal left her mother traumatized, and turned her into a promiscuous adolescent who had nine abortions before Jane was born. It also made her a manic depressive who took her own life at 42.
Speaking to Miss Larson for Net-a-Porter’s website The Edit, Miss Fonda said that she regretted not being a better parent to her own three grown up children. She said: ‘I didn’t know how to do it. But you can learn, so I studied how to be a parent. It’s never too late.’
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Miss Larson said she has learned that in Hollywood ‘the only power I have in my career is the word no’. Miss Fonda admitted that it took her nearly ‘60 years to learn to say no’ to work. The actress has had a troubled life herself and suffered bulimia during her childhood. She has been married three times, the last of which was to US TV mogul Ted Turner.
She endured the fighting and his adultery but ended it after ten years when she became a Christian. Speaking to Oprah Winfrey in 2012 Miss Fonda said it was not until she was 62 did she feel that she did not have to be with a man and finally felt whole.