In her new memoir Open Book, Jessica Simpson detailed how she was sexually molested from the ages of 6-12 by the daughter of a family friend who was a year older than her. Now she revealed on the Feb. 6 Dr. Oz Show show that a backstabbing BFF who she confided in about the abuse told everyone in her school about it. As a result, it caused her to be called a “lesbian.” “By the time I was in junior high I had told one of my best friends the story, and the whole school said that I was a lesbian. And at that time I didn’t even know what that word meant,” she explained to Dr. Mehmet Oz.
“I would cheer at a game and the cheerleaders — I was the head cheerleader and I dropped out. I will never be a cheerleader again because these girls went over to the other team and told them and everybody started chanting ‘lesbian’ and I ran out,” Jessica continued. “I did experience a lot of bullying and I handled it with grace because I had already done that as a child. I just prayed for all the people who were saying mean things because I wanted God to put love in their hearts.”
Jessica details the sexual abuse in her book, and says it started when her family visited the girl’s family and the two shared a bed. Later, her younger sister Ashlee, 35, began sleeping in the same bed, and Jess had to protect her from getting molested as well. “After lights out, I would feel her hands on me. It would start with tickling my back and then going into things that were extremely uncomfortable, Jessica wrote. “The second time she abused me, it was during spring visit and Ashlee was also in the bed. I lay between them, fiercely protecting my sister from this monster. I didn’t want her to feel as disgusting as I felt,” Jess continues.
“For six years, I was abused by this girl during our family’s visits, which happened three times a year. Eventually it wasn’t just at nighttime. She would get me to go into a closet with her, or just find a way to linger until we were alone. It got to the point that she would sneak into the bathroom to watch me shower. I did not know how to get away from her,” she revealed. Jessica wrote that she finally got up the courage to tell her parents about it during a car trip when she was 12. “My mother slapped my father’s arm with the back of her hand. ‘I told you something was happening,’ she yelled at him,” Jessica explained. She said her dad had no reaction and just kept on looking ahead and driving. “We never stayed at my parents’ friends’ house again, but we also didn’t talk about what I had said,” Jess wrote.