sexual abuse

Carly Simon Says She Was Sexually Abused at 7 Years Old

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Carly Simon Photo: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

In a new excerpt from her interview with People, Carly Simon says she was sexually abused at age seven by a teenage family friend. “It was heinous. It changed my view about sex for a long time,” she reveals, saying that although she told her older sisters about the abuse, they didn’t believe her until they read her forthcoming memoir. “Neither of them were at all aware of what had happened to me,” she says. “I told them the first year that it was happening, and they thought I was just trying to be one of the bigger girls.” The abuse stopped, she says, when her mother (whom she believes eventually found out) banned the family friend from their home.

At the time, Simon remembers being confused: “I was devastated because I thought I was in a romance. Which I think happens to a lot of girls. Your libido overpowers everything! You’re so libidinous even at the age of nine and ten. And sometimes there’s an outlet there. I bet in many more cases than we know about there is.” Simon says she later saw a child psychologist and reluctantly told him what happened.

Carly Simon Says She Was Sexually Abused at 7