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Alyssa Milano Shares Why She Didn’t Report Her Assault

Alyssa Milano.
Alyssa Milano. Photo: David Livingston/Getty Images

As more and more people share why they didn’t report their sexual assault following Donald Trump’s comments about Christine Blasey Ford, Alyssa Milano wrote an essay for Vox explaining why she didn’t report the assault she experienced as a teen.

She directly addressed the allegation made by Christine Blasey Ford against Brett Kavanaugh, and Donald Trump’s response to those allegations. “The courage of survivors will always be stronger than Donald Trump’s hate. The lives of survivors will always be more important than Brett Kavanaugh’s career,” she wrote. “I’ve watched, horrified as politicians and pundits refused to believe or take seriously these allegations.”

She wrote about the very emotional experience of choosing to disclose her assault, and why it took years to do so.

It took me years after my assault to voice the experience to my closest friends. It took me three decades to tell my parents that the assault had even happened. I never filed a police report. I never told officials. I never tried to find justice for my pain because justice was never an option.


For me, speaking up meant reliving one of the worst moments of my life. It meant recognizing my attacker’s existence when I wanted nothing more than to forget that he was allowed to walk on this Earth at all. This is what every survivor goes through. Telling our stories means being vulnerable to public attacks and ridicule when our only “crime” was to be assaulted in the first place.

Milano’s essay was partially as a personal exploration of her own response to Donald Trump and the GOP’s comments about Ford’s allegation against Kavanaugh, and feelings about her own assault years ago. But it also was a call to action.

Alyssa Milano Shared Why She Didn’t Report Her Assault