true crime

Demi Moore was raped at 15. Her mother was allegedly behind it. 

 

While Demi Moore was raped at 15, her perpetrator asked her just one question.

“How does it feel to be whored out by you mother for 500 dollars?”

Speaking to Diane Sawyer on Good Morning America this week, 56-year-old Moore was asked whether she believed there was truth to the question posed by her attacker.

“I think in my deep heart, no, I don’t think it was a straight-forward transaction,” the actress replied.

“But she still did give him the access and put me in harm’s way.”

Video by Good Morning America

Moore’s mother, Virginia King, was a teenager when she fell pregnant to her husband Charles Harmon Senior in 1962. By the time Moore was born, he’d left.

King suffered from alcohol and drug addiction. Moore was only a child when she reached into her mother’s mouth to remove the pills she had tried to swallow during a suicide attempt.

As a teenager, Moore accompanied her mother to bars. One night, she returned home to find an older man described as “three times” her age, had been given a key to their apartment. It was he who raped her – an act of betrayal not only by him, but by her own mother.

“For decades, I didn’t even think of it as rape,” Moore writes in her new memoir titled Inside Out, “something I caused, something I felt obligated to do because this man expected it from me.”

The star of Ghost and St. Elmo’s Fire, also shares the extent of her alcohol and drug dependency in the memoir, recalling, “The problem was, when I did have a drink, I couldn’t stop; there was no little voice in my head saying, That’s enough, Demi. There were no brakes.”

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While living in Brazil to film Blame it on Rio in 1984, Moore says she developed a cocaine dependency, which eventually “nearly burned a hole through my nostrils”. Soon after, she found herself in rehab, and began a long period of sobriety.

Inside Out also explores Moore’s highly publicised relationship with Ashton Kutcher, 15 years her junior.

She recalls meeting Kutcher, famous at the time from the hit comedy series That 70s Show, and staying up the entire night talking and sharing each other’s life stories.

“When I met Ashton, it almost felt like a do-over, like I could just go back in time and experience what it was like to be young with him,” she writes.

Listen to the latest episode of The Spill, Mamamia’s celebrity podcast. Post continues below. 

Their relationship, however, quickly changed. Kutcher told Moore he didn’t know “if alcoholism is a real thing” which led to Moore believing he wanted a girl who could “have a glass of wine at dinner, or do a tequila shot at a party.”

As Kutcher became less and less present, and rumours of infidelity began to surface, Moore describes desperately trying to “fit the mold of the woman he wanted his wife to be” and exploring threesomes. In retrospect, she describes the decision as a “mistake”.

Moore writes in Inside Out that Kutcher had two affairs – the second which ended their almost six-year marriage.

Moore’s memoir was released today.

If this post brings up any issues for you, or if you just feel like you need to speak to someone, please call 1800 RESPECT (1800 737 732) – the national sexual assault, domestic and family violence counselling service. It doesn’t matter where you live, they will take your call and, if need be, refer you to a service closer to home.