Demi Moore Was Raped When She Was 15, She Reveals in New Memoir

Demi Moore has long reigned as one of the highest-profile actors in Hollywood, and with good reason: Few others could pull off shaving their heads on camera (particularly at the time) or making pottery with a ghost. But the release of her memoir, Inside Out, reveals that Moore’s childhood—before she became one of the most recognizable stars on the planet—was nothing short of nightmarish.

In the book, Moore writes that she was raped when she was 15 by a man who knew her mother, asking her as it happened, “How does it feel to be whored by your mother for $500?”

Asked by Good Morning America’s Diane Sawyer whether Moore believed her attacker was telling the truth, Moore responded:

“I think in my deep heart, no, I don’t think it was a straight-forward transaction,” Moore said. “But she still did give him the access and put me in harm’s way.”

Moore explained that her mother had her when she was a teenager, and that her parents were both alcoholics. She was 12 the first time she had to remove pills her mother had taken in a suicide attempt from her mouth.

“I remember using my fingers—the small fingers of a child—to dig the pills my mother had tried to swallow out of her mouth,” she wrote.

As a teenager, Moore’s mother would take her to bars with her, and one night, she arrived home to find an older man had let himself into their apartment with a key. She characterized the situation as “rape and betrayal.”

Moore landed her first big role on General Hospital when she was 19, but the stress of the job led her to turn to alcohol and cocaine. She cleaned up and stayed sober for 20 years, until she met erstwhile husband Ashton Kutcher. Sawyer promises the next installment will feature Moore talking about her marriages, though considering that she wrote that Kutcher repeatedly cheated on her, it doesn’t sound like part two will exactly be cheerful. At least there’s the taxidermy.