Mariska Hargitay Opened up About Her Sexual Assault in an Emotional Essay
As Detective Olivia Benson on Law and Order: SVU and through her real-world activism, Mariska Hargitay has been standing up for survivors of sexual assault for decades. Now she’s her own advocate.
In a candid essay for People, Hargitay revealed that, when she was in her 30s, she was raped. Like many victims, she said, she knew her assailant and describes a feeling of being “outside” her own body. She also explained that, in the aftermath of the assault, she had tried to erase the event from her memory.
“I couldn’t believe that it happened,” Hargitay wrote. “That it could happen. So I cut it out. I removed it from my narrative. I now have so much empathy for the part of me that made that choice because that part got me through it. It never happened. Now I honor that part: I did what I had to do to survive.”
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Hargitay wrote that she hopes to help ease the shame sexual assault survivors often feel, but also, like her iconic character, she wants to end sexual violence altogether. That starts with accountability. “Sexual violence persists not because of something unchangeable in our human condition,” she said. “It exists because power structures are in place that allow it to happen.”
In 2010, Hargitay’s own Joyful Heart nonprofit foundation began prioritizing its focus on the huge number of untested rape kits in the United States through its End the Backlog initiative. “I couldn’t believe that this could happen,” Hargitay told People in a 2020 interview. “This is a crystal clear microcosm of what is wrong with our society.” The effort was depicted in her 2018 documentary, I Am Evidence.
While Detective Benson puts perpetrators in jail, Mariska Hargitay’s version of accountability doesn’t necessarily require the justice system. “As for justice, it’s important to know that it may look different for each survivor,” she said. “For me, I want an acknowledgment and an apology.”
