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Actress Jemima Kirke Opens Up About Being Raped By Her Drug Dealer At 22
“I was ashamed because I believed that what had happened to me was a result of having very little self-worth,” Kirke wrote on Twitter.
Jemima Kirke was once raped by her drug dealer, the actress revealed this week.
The 33-year-old “Girls” star shared her story on Twitter on Thursday, saying that she was in her early twenties when the assault occurred.
“OK, f*ck it. When I was 22 I was raped by my drug dealer,” she wrote. “After I kindly asked him to leave (I didn’t want to make him angry), I dragged myself to the hospital. After the various STD tests, the doctor said sympathetically, ‘You gotta start looking after yourself.’ I believed what he meant was, ‘This could have been prevented if you weren’t hanging out with a drug dealer.’”
Kirke went on to explain that this sort of victim-blaming mentality drove her to keep her assault a secret.
“It would seem that the responsibility was on me and for this reason I didn’t tell anyone and I didn’t report it,” she wrote. “I was ashamed because I believed that what had happened to me was a result of having very little self-worth, that this is what happens to drug addicts. This is wrong.”
Kirke then explained what often drives survivors of sexual assault to blame themselves.
“My rape had nothing to do with my choices,” she wrote. “Drug dealers don’t rape people any more than a family man does. The rehab counselors didn’t correct that belief. My own mother didn’t correct it. F*ck anyone who meant well but told me to look at this ‘as a sign’ that I needed help.”
Kirke has been open in the past about her struggles with drugs and alcohol, disclosing last year that she would often indulge in “three-day benders,” during which she “went hard.”
Now a mother of two, Kirke went on to theorize that her daughter is “likely” to experience sexual assault at some point in her lifetime.
“I can’t prevent that. She can’t prevent that. But no matter what the circumstances, it won’t be her fault,” she said.
Kirke also pointed to Dr. Christine Blasey Ford as the inspiration for her post. Dr. Ford, a research psychologist and professor, detailed allegations of having been sexually assaulted as a teen by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh during a polarizing Senate hearing on Thursday.
Kirke is one of many celebrities who have opened up about sexual assault in the weeks since Dr. Ford first shared her story.
Another actress, Busy Philipps, revealed that she had been raped at the age of 14 in an Instagram post on Thursday; Padma Lakshmi, of “Top Chef” fame, recounted the trauma she experienced both as a child and a teen this week in a moving op-ed for the New York Times.
[Photo: Getty Images]
