Hatcher tells of child abuse anguish

A SOBBING Teri Hatcher opened up to Oprah Winfrey about years of sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her uncle.

In her first TV interview on the subject since revealing in March that she had been molested as a child, the Desperate Housewives star also saw a video message from the family of teenager Sarah Van Cleemput, who committed suicide after being abused by the same man.

Hatcher, who went to prosecutors in 2002 with her own story after hearing about the 14-year-old’s case, tearfully told the worst thing she recalled about the ordeals.

“He was touching me and he said to me, ‘Doesn’t this feel good?’,” Hatcher explained.

“It is something that I’ve really struggled with, because... if I let sex feel good, if I let sex be what a woman should have with a man that she cares about, then somehow he was right.”

Hatcher said her uncle, Richard Stone, molested her for three years, starting when she was five years old.

After she went to police he pleaded guilty to four counts of child molestation in Sarah’s case and was jailed for 14 years.

Hatcher told Oprah she remembered the abuse in heartbreaking detail, including the car park Stone would drive her to and the colour of his car’s upholstery.

“I never had repressed memories,” Hatcher said. “My memories have always been in my mind. There’s nothing that I haven’t lived with every single day.”

The 41-year-old said she felt “a lot of shame” for knowing what would happen when she got in the car, and for choosing to do so.

“I wanted to go because I guess I wanted that special attention,” she said. “And that is part of the horror of the blame and the victim and the chain.”

Hatcher said that despite her troubles and getting divorced, she had done “a lot of work” on herself and was ready for a physical relationship.

“I really want to find somebody that I can trust and go deep with and have crazy, wild sex,” she said.