The “One Day at a Time” alum said she’s “pissed off that it happened,” adding, “Nobody deserves that.”

Valerie Bertinelli reveals she was sexually abused at 11: ‘I was just a little girl’

The "One Day at a Time" alum said she's "pissed off that it happened," adding, "Nobody deserves that."

By Emlyn Travis

Emlyn Travis is a news writer at **. She has been working at EW since 2022. Her work has previously appeared on MTV News, Teen Vogue, and *NME*.

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March 4, 2026 11:22 a.m. ET

Valerie Bertinelli attends the 51st annual Daytime Emmys Awards at The Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites, Los Angeles on June 7, 2024 in Los Angeles, Calif. Credit:

Rodin Eckenroth/Getty

Valerie Bertinelli is opening up about being sexually abused as a child. **

The *One Day at a Time* alum reveals in her forthcoming memoir, titled *Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Perfectly Imperfect*, that she was sexually assaulted at age 11. **

“I guess because I'm healing from it, it’s not so scary anymore,” Bertinelli told PEOPLE about the incident. “I can say it out loud. I was sexually assaulted. It doesn't feel like it owns me anymore.”

Valerie Bertinelli at the 51st Annual Daytime Emmy Creative Arts & Lifestyle Awards at the Westin Bonaventure Hotel & Suites on June 8, 2024 in Los Angeles, Calif.

Stewart Cook/Getty

The *Drew Barrymore Show* star explained that it took her at least a decade to feel ready to share her experience with the world. **

“The very first time I said it out loud to my therapist, I thought, ‘I’m going to feel better now.’ It got worse before it got better,” she recalled. “I maybe ate a little bit more, drank a little bit more. When you stop eating things for comfort, stop drinking alcohol, it exposes your feelings. You can deal with them or not. And I chose to deal with them.” **

She added, “I don't feel shame about it anymore. I’m pissed off that it happened. Nobody deserves that.”

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Bertinelli shared that she purposefully included a photograph of herself at age 11 at the beginning of the chapter so that readers could see “that’s the little girl that was sexually abused.”**

“It boggles my mind that this little girl was taken advantage of that way,” she continued. “And it boggles my mind because it’s still happening. And I don’t know how we are going to finally come up and say, ‘This is enough.’”**

Reflecting on what she was like as an 11-year-old, Bertinelli described her younger self as someone who “loved to color, read, play with my Barbies and ride my bike around the block.” She added, “I loved my cats. I was just a little girl.” **

Now, she continued, "I'm a survivor."

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Still, Bertinelli acknowledged that she carried a feeling of “shame” with her for a long time. “And I know I’m not the only one that feels that way,” she said. “Unfortunately a lot of women feel shame for something that was never their fault.”

She recalled an incident in which she told an unnamed individual about the incident, only for them to use it “against me as a weapon to hurt me” out of anger. “And I thought, ‘This can’t ever happen again,’” Bertinelli said. “I can’t control what other people say or do to me, or say about me, but what I can control is how I feel about myself and how that could affect me if someone says something that I know isn’t true about me.” **

Which is why Bertinelli “dug deep” and began therapy. It was during those sessions that she realized that the “shame” that she felt about herself and her body over the years was rooted in childhood trauma. **

“As I was going through that, I’m thinking people are going to wonder, why do I have so much self-loathing? That’s not normal,” she said. “It’s because trauma happened in my childhood for the most part. I can’t speak for anybody else, but it’s pretty textbook.”**

*Getting Naked: The Quiet Work of Becoming Perfectly Imperfect *arrives on bookshelves on March 10. **

*If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.*

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