Mariska Hargitay reveals she was raped by friend in her 30s: ‘I left my body’

Mariska Hargitay has revealed she was raped by her friend when she was in her 30s.

“It wasn’t s****l at all. It was domination and control. Overwhelming control,” she wrote in a first-person essay for People magazine.

“He was a friend. So he wasn’t.

The ‘Law & Order: SVU’ star, who details the terror she felt at the time, recalls trying “every way” she knew how to “get out of it,” but couldn’t. couldn’t escape as he grabbed her by the arms and held her down.

“I didn’t want it to escalate into violence. I know now that it was already s****l violence, but I was afraid he would become physically violent,” she wrote.

“I went into freeze mode, a common traumatic reaction when there is no possibility of escape. I left my body.

Hargitay, 59, admits she downplayed the a*sault and tried to push it to the back of her mind so she could “get over” the trauma.

“Now I honor that part: I did what I had to do to survive,” she shares.

The “Lake Placid” star started her foundation, Joyful Heart, to help victims of s****l a*sault, domestic violence and child abuse, but she now says it helped her do the work she had need to accept what happened to him.

“I think I also needed to see what healing could look like. I think back to the speeches in which I said, ‘I’m not a survivor,'” she wrote. “I wasn’t lying; That wasn’t how I saw myself.

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Hargitay even remembers telling her husband of nearly 20 years, Peter Hermann, that what she experienced was not rape, believing her experience to be a lesser offense.

The longtime actress says survivors who credited her role as Olivia Benson on “SVU” with helping them overcome their trauma are actually the ones who helped her heal.

“It’s a painful part of my story. The experience was horrible. But this is far from defining me, in the same way that no other part of my history defines me,” she concludes her essay.

“No part of anyone’s history defines them.”

If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call the Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-330-0226.