“A man raped me in my 30s”

Law & Order: SVU Star Mariska Hargitay says she, like many of the characters in her NBC procedural, is a victim of sexual violence.

“A man raped me in my 30s,” Hargitay writes in a new one People Essay. “It wasn’t sexual at all. It was dominance and control. Overwhelming control.”

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The Emmy-winning actress doesn’t name the man she believes was the rapist, saying only, “He was a friend. Then he wasn’t.” She remembers that after saying “no,” she “grabbed me by the arms and held on,” “went into freeze mode,” and “checked out of my body.”

Hargitay says she found it difficult to reckon with the experience for years. “I couldn’t process it. I couldn’t believe it happened. That it could happen,” she writes. “So I cut it out. I removed it from my narrative.”

In 2004, inspired by her work on the show, she founded the Joyful Heart Foundation. According to the foundation’s website, its mission is “to transform society’s response to sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse, to support the healing of survivors, and to end this violence forever.”

“I built Joyful Heart from the outside so I could do the work on the inside,” she writes. She notes that conversations with friends about the incident eventually helped her come to “my own realization.” My own assessment.”

She adds that throughout SVULong term view – Season 25 premieres later this month; Hargitay will soon be 60 years old – “Survivors who watched the show told me that I helped them and gave them strength. But they are the ones who gave me strength.”

She calls for a change in the social power structures that enable the continuation of sexual violence. And she outlines what justice would look like in her case: “For me, I want an acknowledgment and an apology. I’m sorry for what I did to you. I raped you. I am without excuse. That is a beginning. I don’t know what’s on the other side, and it won’t undo what happened, but I know it will play a role in how I deal with it.”

TVLine has reached out to Hargitay for further comment.

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