Photo: Courtesy of Netflix
Pamela Anderson reveals she was molested and raped as a child in her new documentary, Pamela, A Love Story, which began streaming today on Netflix.
In the documentary, which was directed by Ryan White, Anderson talks about the traumatizing experience of her infamous leaked sex tape with then-husband Tommy Lee, and she talks about being forced to relive that trauma when Hulu turned her life into a series, Pam & Tommy, without her permission. But perhaps the most shocking portion of the documentary comes when Anderson speaks of a time in her life long before she knew the Mötley Cru drummer, before she ran in slow-motion on a beach, and even before she posed for Playboy.
“I had some horrible things happen when I was little,” Anderson, who is now 55, says early on in the documentary. “I had a babysitter and my parents thought she was a great babysitter, because she brought presents all the time, but she was molesting me. It was like 3 or 4 years of abuse.”
Anderson goes on to say that she attempted to “kill” her abuser by “stabbing her in the heart with a candy cane pen. Then I told her I wanted her to die. She died in a car accident the next day, so I thought I killed her with my magical mind.”
It’s an understandable conclusion for a child to jump to, and Anderson says that belief tortured her for years. “I was sure that I did it—that I wished her dead and she died. I lived with that my whole really young life.”
As if that wasn’t enough unimaginable trauma for a child to endure, Anderson recalls that several years later, as a 12-year-old, she was raped by a 25-year-old man. In a diary entry read aloud by a different actress—because although Anderson agreed to let the filmmakers go through her diaries for the movie, she didn’t want to relive the trauma by re-reading them herself—Anderson writes about being 12 years old and visiting the house of a friend who had a crush on a much older guy. While the friend and said guy went upstairs, Anderson and the guy’s 25-year-old friend were left alone downstairs.
“We started to play [backgammon] for a while until he said I looked like I needed a massage. He was 25. I was 12. He raped me,” Anderson wrote. She goes on to write that she never told her parents, or anyone else.
“I tried to forget it,” the present-day Anderson says. “But I felt like it was tattoed on my forehead. I had this image of ‘I had sex’ on my forehead, when I didn’t want anyone to know that I had it.” She adds that the sexual assault led to extreme shyness throughout her adolescence, up until her first Playboy photoshoot in 1989.
This is not the first time Anderson has spoken publicly about her childhood sexual assault. She also described both assaults, as well as being “gang raped” at 14, in a 2014 speech at Cannes Film Festival. But this is perhaps the first time she has gone into such detail in public.
Needless to say, Pamela, A Love Story is not an easy watch. But for all the trauma Anderson has endured, it’s incredible to watch her natural, sweet, bubbly, and charming demeanor in front of the camera. Your heart will break for her when you see how she’s suffered, but it will also soar when you see how she’s persevered.
If you or someone you know needs to reach out about sexual abuse or assault, RAINN is available 24/7 at 800-656-HOPE (4673), or online at RAINN.org.