Mena Suvari
Actress was sexually assaulted
Mena Suvari 2019 on the red carpet
© Quinn Jeffrey / Shutterstock
Mena Suvari once led a double life: As she now reports, she suffered from psychological problems due to repeated abuse.
Mena Suvari (42) is no longer silent: In her memoir “The Great Peace”, the actress reports on the shocking things that several men did to her at a young age. The “People” magazine tells them beforehand: “Between the ages of twelve and 20 I was repeatedly the victim of sexual abuse.”
She had “led a double life,” the American Pie actress told magazine about the time of her breakthrough in 1999. “Every time I went to the set. Every time I was interviewed, I acted. It was another Role for me that I had to play: that I was okay. “
“Part of me died that day”
In the sixth grade she was raped by a friend of her older brothers, as she writes in the book. She would have said to him: “No, I don’t want to do that.” But he would not have let up and put her under pressure to have sex with him. One month before her 13th birthday, the rape reportedly took place in a room in his family’s home. “Part of me died that day. He used me, had fun with me, and dumped me. He called me a whore.”
From then on, she no longer had a healthy idea of sex. In addition, it destroyed her self-worth, she thought it was her worth and reproached herself for “allowing it to come to this”.
After moving to Hollywood to become an actress at 15, she thought she had no choice when a manager and boyfriend wanted to have a sexual relationship with her. “I didn’t feel that I had other options or that I deserved a life that was different.”
She then took drugs and regularly lost herself in nightclubs. “I turned to every form of self-medication I could find just to keep going. I was just trying to survive,” she quotes People. Even a steady relationship did not convey a healthy image of intimacy: A man named Tyler, with whom the then 17-year-old was together for three years, also abused her sexually and emotionally. “I remember thinking maybe relationships are like this: the screaming, the name-calling, the abuse.”
Therapy and good friends helped her
Through therapy and good friends, she eventually learned that she deserved better. After two marriages and divorces, she fell in love with Michael Hope in 2016, and the two married in August 2018. “It was the first time I had the feeling that I wanted a family with someone,” said Suvari. She now has it too: Her son Christopher was born in April 2021.
Help with depression is offered by telephone counseling on the free number: 0800/111 0 111