Tyler Perry stunned his fans last year with revelations of his abusive past and now Tyler Perry is opening up about just how bad it got. In a new interview with Oprah Winfrey, which aired Wednesday, the writer-director says his own father beat him brutally and he was sexually molested by men. In one harrowing moment, he recalls when his father whipped him with a vacuum cord.
“To this day, I don’t know why he did it,” Perry, 41, says in the interview. “But I remember him cornering me in a room and hitting me with this vacuum cleaner cord. He would just not stop.”
After another abusive incident, Perry says he blacked out for three days.
How to Cope
Eventually, he found a small way to cope – by daydreaming about a nearby park his mother used to visit with him.
“Every time somebody was doing something to me that was horrible, that was awful, I could go to this park in my mind until it was over,” Perry says.
On top of his father’s beatings, Perry says he was sexually abused by four different adults, beginning when he was five or six. On one occasion, he was building a birdhouse with an adult male neighbor who proceeded to put his hands in Tyler’s pants. “I felt my body betraying me,” he says, “because I felt an erection at that age.”
Later, Tyler said he was sexually molested by a male nurse and a man he knew from church. The man from church “used God and the Bible against me to justify a lot of the things that were going on. It was so horrible,” he said. “And that was my first sexual experience – with this man performing oral sex on me as a boy.”
Thoughts of Suicide
When it all became unbearable, Perry says he slit his wrists and tried to commit suicide. “I thought, ‘What is the point of living?'” he says. “My mother was truly my saving grace, because she would take me to church with her.”
All these years later, Perry says the catalyst for his candor was his mother’s death last year. “I knew if I spoke about this, that she would be hurt,” he says. “I feel this tremendous sense of, ‘Now it’s time for me to take care of me and get some of this stuff out of me and be free from it.'”
Forgiveness
Ultimately, Perry says it was forgiveness that helped him begin to heal.
“I forgave him,” Perry says of his father. “The same amount of strength to take it is the same amount of strength it takes to let it go. As a man I am not going to sit here and let myself suffer anymore.”
Congratulations, Mr. Perry, for freeing yourself from this burden and for having the courage to speak publicly about these awful atrocities committed against you. You show tremendous strength and good example by forgiving those who have acted so wrongly against you. May God grant you peace and serenity.
AND NOW HE CAN COME OUT THE CLOSET TOO….
why would he have to come out the closet..I hate gays and fags or what ever..but this shit wasnt his fault..so shut the fuck upo with your dumb ass statements..and get that inter racial bullshit off here, real brothas aint checkn for white bitches.
I hope and pray that all the child molesters get killed not matter how they die because even though God will take care of them at the end, I want them to be murdered so that their punishment can have some suffering and pain before their eternal life begins in hell.
I feel so sad for Tyler because even though he has forgiven those who physical and mentally destroyed him as a child, he really can’t move forward because it still haunts him. I know that having men and women use and abuse your body does have your mind playing tricks on you with your sexuality and the feelings you have towards the same and opposite sex, but it doesn’t make you gay but if he is, oh well who cares!!! He is human and he has the right to live the way he pleases too.
Oh yeah and his mother and aunt are f**king idiots!!! Your mom was abused before, SO WHAT! That means a mother’s love will try her hardest not to let her child experience the same pain she did. Like why was she so afraid to get involved rather it was when the daddy was beating his a** or when Tyler was acting strange when his abusers came around because you know good and well he showed some signs of confusion and fear. He’s aunt protected him like are you for real, well why did she kept sending him back home to his father or around those who were abusing him, if you know something is going on, you do all you can to STOP it not just suppress it. Let me tell you something if I even think my child is being molested, I’m catching a case!!!
So For Colored Girls opens Nov 5, is that right?
Good timing….
Sorry it sounded scripted overly so..
Tyler I know people you have worked with..period
Come on now..