US comedian and talk-show host Rosie O’Donnell has said she was sexually abused by her father when she was a child.
O’Donnell makes the claim in an upcoming book, Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of the View, published by Variety.
“It started very young,” O’Donnell told Variety. “And then when my mother died, it sort of ended in a weird way, because then he was with these five children to take care of. On the whole, it’s not something I like to talk about.”
O’Donnell’s mother, Roseann, died when her daughter was 10; O’Donnell’s father, Edward Joseph, died in 2015.
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“Of course, it changes everyone. Any child who is put in that position, especially by someone in the family, you feel completely powerless and stuck, because the person you would tell is the person doing it,” O’Donnell said.
Ladies Who Punch will be published in the US on April 2nd.
The Rosie O’Donnell Show aired from 1996 to 2002. O’Donnell then appeared on the more politically focused The View for two years. She rejoined the cast in September 2014 for six months after creator Barbara Walters retired.
