Valerie Bertinelli Reveals She Was Sexually Abused at Age 11: ‘I Don’t Feel Shame About It Anymore. I’m Pissed Off That It Happened’

For the first time in her decades-long career, Valerie Bertinelli is sharing a deeply personal and painful truth. The beloved actress and television personality, 65, has revealed in an exclusive PEOPLE cover story that she was sexually abused at 11 years old, a trauma she’s carried in silence for more than 50 years.

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

The revelation comes as part of her new book, Getting Naked, out March 10 from Harper Wave. What began as a project about self-love evolved into something far more vulnerable. “I had no plans to reveal this,” she admits. “This was going to be a book about teaching people how to love themselves. I did not know that I would go this far.”

In a poignant decision, Bertinelli “purposely” included a childhood photograph of herself at age 11 in the book, “because that was the little girl that was sexually abused,” she explains. Looking at the image now, she feels a mixture of sorrow and fury.

“It boggles my mind that this little girl was taken advantage of that way. It boggles my mind because it’s still happening and I’m furious about it. And we need to start speaking up and saying, ‘Enough.'”

Describing herself at that age, Bertinelli paints a picture of innocence: “I loved to color, read, play with my Barbies and ride my bike around the block. I loved my cats. I was just a little girl.”

Bertinelli says it’s taken at least a decade to reach this point of openness. “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 turned to familiar coping mechanisms, “I maybe ate a little bit more, drank a little bit more” before realizing she needed to face her feelings directly.

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

A severe anxiety attack in late 2024 pushed her to dig deeper. “It brought me to my knees,” she says. “And I thought I’m not getting anywhere. I needed to do more work.” That work meant confronting the root of decades of body shame and self-criticism.

“All of that shame had nothing to do with my body,” she explains. “It was just something to take out my shame on. My poor body. I was so mean to it. I just needed to get all those voices out of my head. 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. It’s because trauma happened in my childhood for the most part. I can’t speak for anybody else but it’s pretty textbook.”

Looking back on her journey, Bertinelli sums it up simply: “I’m a survivor.”

Through all the turmoil, she continues to lead with her heart, the same quality that’s connected her with fans since she was 15 years old on One Day at a Time, through Hot in Cleveland alongside her dear friend Betty White, and now as a beloved member of the “Drew Crew” on The Drew Barrymore Show.

She credits that show, which she calls “an oasis”, along with the love and support of her son, Wolfgang Van Halen, and her passion for cooking with helping her heal. Looking forward, she’s launching a new digital platform called Valerie’s Place. “I want to build a community where everybody is welcome. It’s a place where people can come into my kitchen and cook with me because I’ve missed that a lot.”

Getting Naked, Bertinelli says, is ultimately about embracing every facet of oneself. “It’s about getting naked with who I am, emotionally, physically,” she shares. “It was really about getting to the nitty gritty and getting to the parts that I thought were shameful and come to find out they’re not. They’re all kinds of different facets of what makes us who we are.”