Latifah said she was abused by a teenage boy who was put in charge of her. "He violated me," she tells Essence magazine. "I never told anybody; I just buried it as deeply as I could and kept people at an arm's distance. I never really let a person get too close to me. I could have been married years ago, but I had a commitment issue."Latifah says she didn't tell anyone till the death of her brother when she was 22 years old. "I had to get it off my chest. My mother felt terrible. She was kind of a country girl, so she wasn't up on how slick people could be. When I told my dad, he said nothing," she tells the publication.
The Cover Girl says for many years she blamed herself for the sexual abuse she endured but after speaking with her therapist she came to terms with it. "I was a kid, and I had no power or control over the situation. I really wish I'd had the strength and the knowledge to say something sooner, because I always wondered, Did he do that to someone else? But I accept that the time for action has come and gone."
