Actress Demi Moore revealed on “Good Morning America” Monday that when she was 15 years old she was allegedly raped by a man after he paid her mother $500.
According to Moore, she came home one night to her mother’s apartment to find an older man there who her mother knew. The man then forcibly raped her, Moore claims. After he completed the horrific act, she said, he then asked her how it felt “to be whored by your mother for $500.”
When host Diane Sawyer asked if her mother intentionally did this to her own daughter, Moore said she does not believe it was a “straightforward transaction.”
“I think, in my deep heart no — I don’t think it was a straightforward transaction,” Moore told Sawyer, as reported by Fox News. “But she still — she did give him the access and put me in harm’s way.”
The alleged rape was also described in Moore’s new memoir, “Inside Out,” which she dedicated to both her mother and her three daughters. In the book, she describes a deeply troubling childhood spurred by two alcoholic parents who often moved the family across the country. Moore even recalled witnessing her mother attempt suicide when she was just age 12.
“I remember using my fingers, the small fingers of a child, to dig the pills my mother had tried to swallow, out of her mouth,” Moore said in the book.
In the same interview with Sawyer, Moore revealed the many thoughts that plagued her after learning that her dad was not her actual biological father, which gravely damaged her self-perception. “I wasn’t wanted, or that I don’t deserve to be here” were the words she often told herself growing up, she said. From Yahoo News:
Along the way, Moore learned that Dan wasn’t her biological father, leading her to feel like she “wasn’t wanted” by her real dad. Not long after, Dan left, making Moore responsible for her unstable mother. That’s when the bar trips began and the rape occurred. Moore dropped out of high school not long after the assault, moved to L.A. and pursued a career in Hollywood.
Her troubles followed, she said in the interview. During her first role — on General Hospital — she developed a problem with alcohol and cocaine. During one of her early and prominent roles — in 1985’s St. Elmo’s Fire — she was ordered to go to rehab by the director and producer as her addiction worsened. The character she played in the film, Jules, also had drug problems.
“I mean — the irony certainly was not lost on me,” she said, calling the trip to rehab in her 20s “a profound gift that they gave me.”
Moore’s shocking revelation about her mother comes one week after outlets published excerpts from her memoir in which she expressed regret for ever partaking in threesomes during her marriage with actor Ashton Kutcher, which she says he pointed to as a rationale for his alleged cheating.
“I wanted to show him how great and fun I could be,” Moore wrote in the book regarding her threesomes with Kutcher.
When reports surfaced in 2010 showing that Kutcher met a 21-year-old woman and had relations with her while Moore was off filming a movie, the actress claims that he brought up their past threesomes as a defense against charges of cheating.
“Because we had brought a third party into our relationship, Ashton said, that blurred the lines and, to some extent, justified what he’d done,” she said. “I felt sick to my stomach.”