PADMA’S PAIN
‘Top Chef’ host tells of rape at 16, molest at 7
“Top Chef” host Padma Lakshmi was raped by a boyfriend when she was 16 and molested by a relative of her stepfather when she was 7, she revealed in a first-person essay published Tuesday.
The model and actress wrote in The New York Times that she began dating the boyfriend — who was a 23year-old college student at the time — after meeting him at the mall where they both worked.
“We were intimate to a point, but he knew that I was a virgin and that I was unsure of when I would be ready to have sex,” Lakshmi wrote. “On New Year’s Eve, just a few months after we first started dating, he raped me.”
Lakshmi, now 48, says the boyfriend, whom she does not name, assaulted her after she fell asleep at his apartment following their return from several parties they attended earlier that night.
“The next thing I remember is waking up to a very sharp stabbing pain like a knife blade between my legs,” she wrote. “He was on top of me. I asked, ‘What are you doing?’ He said, ‘It will only hurt for a while.’ ‘Please don’t do this,’ I screamed.”
She wrote that the incident has been on her mind in recent days as members of Congress prepare to hear sexual assault allegations that have surfaced against U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.
Lakshmi says she didn’t tell anyone what had happened afterward, writing she was initially in shock, then started to feel it was her fault.
Later in the essay, Lakshmi wrote about the abuse she experienced at 7 years old.
“My stepfather’s relative touched me between my legs and put my hand on his erect penis,” she wrote. “Shortly after I told my mother and stepfather, they sent me to India for a year to live with my grandparents. The lesson was: If you speak up, you will be cast out.”
Lakshmi briefly opened up about these experiences in a series of tweets last week using the hashtag #Why I Didnt Report. She also tweeted at the time that she was assaulted a third time when she was 23.
She was one of several public figures to share their stories after President Trump questioned why Kavanaugh’s first accuser didn’t go to authorities.
“I have no doubt that, if the attack on Dr. Ford was as bad as she says, charges would have been immediately filed with local Law Enforcement Authorities by either her or her loving parents,” Trump tweeted Friday. “I ask that she bring those filings forward so that we can learn date, time, and place!”
Christine Blasey Ford claims Kavanaugh sexually assaulted her at a party during the 1980s, when she was 15.
A second woman, Deborah Ramirez, then came forward in a report published Sunday by The New Yorker to claim Kavanaugh exposed himself and placed his penis in front of her face, and that she made contact with it as she pushed him away.
Attorney Michael Avenatti has also said he knows of a third Kavanaugh accuser whom he expects to come forward soon.
Kavanaugh has denied the allegations.