Breanna Stewart was molested for two years as a child, the WNBA star wrote in an essay for The Players’ Tribune titled “Me Too.”
Stewart wrote that an unnamed construction worker abused her from ages 9 to 11 at a house where she slept over all the time.
“I don’t know how to say this part,” she wrote. “I haven’t told many people. I’m not the most vulnerable person — I don’t talk about my feelings much — so this is uncomfortable.
“I was molested for years.”
She told her parents when she was 11, and the man was arrested and confessed, according to Stewart’s essay.
Stewart, 23 and the youngest member of the U.S. Olympic basketball team that won gold in Rio, said she was encouraged to come forward as part of the #MeToo movement by another Olympic champion.
“I was recently reading McKayla Maroney’s personal account of sexual abuse — one of many powerful stories the #metoo campaign has inspired — and I felt … less alone,” she wrote.
“I’ll never forgive him. But I’m not ashamed. I’m angry he took advantage of me as a child. I’ll never get that time back. And what memories I still have, I’ll never be able to erase them. Sometimes I wish for a few more black holes.”
Stewart, a star at UConn and now the Seattle Storm, said she came forward because she could save someone’s life.
“That’s why I’m writing this. This is bigger than me,” she wrote. “I’m still working through what comes next now that I have told my story. In sharing, I know that no matter how uncomfortable I typically am making things about myself, as a public survivor, I now assume a certain responsibility. So I’ll start by saying this: If you are being abused, tell somebody. If that person doesn’t believe you, tell somebody else. A parent, a family member, a teacher, a coach, a friend’s parent. Help is there.”
