Demi: I was raped at 15 by a stranger who claimed he had paid my mother $500
‘My childhood was done’
DEmI moore has revealed that she was raped at 15 by a man who claimed her mother ‘sold’ her to him for $500.
promoting her new autobiography, the 56-year- old Hollywood actress, 56, told a US tV interviewer how her alcoholic mother, Virginia King, took her to bars when she was in her early teens.
Her mother hoped the pair would be noticed by men, she said.
One night miss moore came home to find an older man waiting for her, having let himself into the apartment with a key given to him by miss King.
After the attack, her tormentor made a cruel joke, asking her how it felt to be sold for sex by her mother.
Speaking on ABC’s Good morning America, miss moore told interviewer Diane Sawyer she did not believe her attacker’s claim to have paid her mother $500 (then about £270) to have sex with her. But the Ghost and St Elmo’s Fire star said she felt that her mother put her at risk by giving the man a key to their apartment.
Asked if she felt ‘sold’ by miss King, miss moore said: ‘In my deep heart no, I don’t think it was a straightforward transaction. But she still did give him the access and put me in harm’s way.’
In her book, Inside Out, which is published today, miss moore goes into detail about her troubled childhood. She told ABC news that she was born to a teenage mother who did not know how to protect her.
miss King and the man miss moore thought was her father – but turned out not to be – had debts and fought constantly.
When she was 12, miss moore saved her mother from a suicide attempt, the first of several. In the book she writes: ‘I rememher ber using my fingers, the small fingers of a child, to dig the pills my mother had tried to swallow out of her mouth.’
miss moore told ABC that after that there were ‘many, many times’ her mother tried to do the same and that ‘my childhood was done – [it was a] life-changing moment’.
Her childhood was rocked by the revelation that the man she loved as her father was not biological father, a fact already known to other members of her family.
She concluded that ‘I wasn’t wanted or that I don’t deserve to be’, she said.
miss moore was born in new mexico but her biological father left while her mother was pregnant.
She was raised by miss King and Dan Guynes, her mother’s second husband, who she thought was her real father until she found her birth certificate when she was 13.
Guynes was a newspaper advertising salesman and they moved around the country frequently. When he walked out, miss King moved her daughter to Hollywood, where she became an actress, quickly landing a part in tV soap opera General Hospital.
miss moore, who has also starred in Indecent proposal, A Few Good men and Disclosure, married at 17.
She was subsequently married to Die Hard star Bruce Willis and then to actor Ashton Kutcher, who is 15 years her junior. In her book, she claims Kutcher pressured her into having threesome sex sessions.
She says he cheated on her – including on their sixth wedding anniversary – and used this as an excuse to suggest sex with other women. She agreed on two occasions.
She writes: ‘I wanted to show him how great and fun I could be’. But she admits it was a mistake. the couple, who married in 2005, divorced in 2013.