John Stamos is opening up about being sexually abused as child in an exclusive interview with PEOPLE magazine.
The Full House star is promoting his new book, If You Would Have Told Me, and revealed he’s a survivor of sexual abuse. According to the news publication the incident occurred when he was “11 or 12” years old and says the misconduct was done by his former baby sitter when he was growing up. Stamos explained to PEOPLE that once he started writing his memoir that’s when realized the baby sitters actions were inappropriate. I mean, I knew, it was always in the back, and I do so much advocacy for the [survivors],” he says. “I felt like, I remembered it slightly. It has always been there, but I packed it away as people do, right?”
Stamos went to explain why he didn’t tell anyone about what happened to him. “I think I told myself, like, ‘Ah, it’s girls, man. It was like you’re playing dead so they’ll stop. But it wasn’t totally aggressive,” he recalls. “I don’t know, it was not good.”
Stamos says he almost revealed the information when he was writing an acceptance speech for a friend but he thought that would’ve been unfair because it would’ve taken away from his friend’s moment. “I started to write it, and that’s when it really came out,” he recalls. “And then I thought, ‘No, tonight is not about me. It’s about the kids. I’m going to pack it away again until the right moment,'” he continues. “Otherwise, I’m a phony f—. It’s like, ‘Come on.'”
“I didn’t want the headlines to be that, and I didn’t want the book to be over that,” he explains. “It was a page or something, but I felt I had to talk about it. It was weird. It was something that, I think, I was probably like 10 or 11 [when it happened]. I shouldn’t have had to deal with those feelings.”
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In his conclusion Stamos spoke about the type of book he decided to write. “I did set out to write a hero story, but then as I was doing it I was like, ‘No, I’m going to tell a human story,'” he says. “Because with the hero story, that’s bulls—. And unless I was a hundred percent forthcoming, what am I doing this for, right? But it was hard.”
Stamos gained widespread recognition for his role as Jesse Katsopolis, known as “Uncle Jesse,” on the popular sitcom “Full House,” which aired from 1987 to 1995. His character became one of the most beloved and iconic uncles in television history.