Babysitter raped me at 7 says author
AMERICAN author Naomi Wolf has claimed she was raped by her babysitter when she was seven.
She said she was assaulted on two consecutive nights, describing it as the closest she has come to death.
Miss Wolf, 55, who is best known for her 1990 book The Beauty Myth, said she decided to speak out about the alleged abuse after being inspired by the MeToo movement in Hollywood.
‘I am a survivor of rape as a child by a male babysitter,’ she told The Sunday Times. ‘Every woman I know who has been raped, including myself, thought she might have been about to die. What is damaging is the experience of being absolutely nothing in the presence of another human being.
‘It is the closest we come to death in this lifetime.’
The former adviser to Bill Clinton revealed her ordeal as she criticised fellow feminist Germaine Greer’s new book, On Rape.
Miss Greer, who was raped as a teenager, caused outrage at the Hay Festival in May when she said most rape was just ‘bad sex’.
But Miss Wolf, who has worked in a rape crisis centre, accused her of understanding ‘nothing whatsoever’ about the subject.