Comedian and actress Rosie O’Donnell reveals she was sexually abused by her father in a new book.
In the upcoming book “Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of ‘The View,” O’Donnell provided insight on the popular daytime talk show “The View, and the struggles she faced while being a co-host talk on the show. She also mentioned that she was abused as a child by her father. “It started very young,” the 56-year-old talk show host told Ramin Setoodeh, Variety’s New York bureau chief and author of the upcoming book.
O’Donnell also said her mother dying of breast cancer greatly impacted her life and shifted her relationship with her father. “And then when my mother died, it sort of ended in a weird way, because then he was with these five children to take care of,” she said. “On the whole, it’s not something I like to talk about. Of course, it changes everyone. Any child who is put in that position, especially by someone in the family, you feel completely powerless and stuck, because the person you would tell is the person doing it.”
O’Donnell’s father, Edward Joseph O’Donnell, died of cancer in August 2015 at age 81. Her mother passed away in 1973 when she was 10 years old.
The actress has always been open about her issues with her father, but she had yet to discuss it in detail, until now. “He had his own issues and demons,” she told Piers Morgan in 2012, adding, “You get to be 50 years old, you can’t still be angry at what your father did in 1970 … I have forgiven him.”
“Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of ‘The View ’” will be released on April 2.
