During an interview on “The Jason Ellis Show" on Monday, actor Dax Shepard revealed he had been molested as a child.
While talking about his battle with addiction, the 41-year-old actor opened up about being sexually assaulted by someone in his neighborhood.
"I was, I want to say, 7 and this dude was probably 18," Shepard said, calling the incidents "minimal."
"It took me 12 years to tell anyone that. And all that time I was like, 'A) It's my fault,' as generic as that is, and 'I'm gay -- I must've manifested this because I'm secretly gay.' I had all these insane thoughts for 11 years, 12 years."
When the radio host, who shared his own stories of sexual abuse by his father earlier, asked the actor if he knew what was happening at the time, Shepard said, "Oh God yeah."
Shepard, who has struggled with alcoholism and drug addiction in the past, recalled a statistic his mom told him linking addiction with molestation. The actor's mom is a court-appointed advocate for children in foster care and often attends workshops to learn more about the kids she works with.
"She called me not to long ago and she said, 'You know, I was just at a seminar this weekend and I learned that if you've been molested, you only have a 20 percent chance of not being an addict," Shepard said. "And I was like, 'Hmm, interesting,' because in my mind I just like to fucking have a great time. But when you hear a statistic like that, I'm like, 'Oh no, I was going to be an addict, period.'"
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