Minnie Driver recently spoke about her experience being sexually assaulted at 17 years old in a radio interview with Pete Dominick.
On Pete’s show, Stand Up! with Pete Dominick on Sirius XM radio, he asked Minnie whether she had ever had an experience with sexual assault.
RELATED: Brave Teen Speaks Out After Sexual Assault
The Will & Grace star replied that she had certainly experienced it, and stressed that this had happened to ‘every girl she knows’. She took issue with how normalised it has become in society, and that young women are taught to sanction it.
“[It’s] the idea that unwanted male attention is something that you are supposed to put up with because it is somehow your role, that a guy can come and touch you, that he can put his hand way down the small of your back so that his hand is kind of going into your butt, and that that’s alright!”
She also raised the issue that when victims come forward, they are often not taken seriously.
“I think young women have been belittled when you said something. I remember being called a prude. I know that’s kind of an old-fashioned word, but in England it was like ‘you’re a square, you’re a prude’.”
She then went on to tell her horrific experience with sexual assault.
“When I was 16 [later corrected to 17] on vacation in Greece, this guy came and he kind of elbow-grabbed me and said ‘You’re going to dance with me,’” Driver said. “I said no and I pulled my arm away from him, and he grabbed me by the back of my hair. I tried to kick him, and then he punched me.
“The way [the police] presented it was ‘this guy was just having a good time and if you’d gone along with it, it would’ve been fine,’” she continued. “‘If you’d just danced with him, you wouldn’t be in this position that you’re in now.’ And I think that is the way it’s framed for most young women.”
She emphasised that her story is not unique when it comes to this issue.
“I don’t know a woman who hasn’t had some form of sexual assault in their life.”
Listen to an excerpt of the interview here:
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