Oscar nominee Minnie Driver has opened up about the sexual assault she endured on holiday when she was 17 years old.
The personal tale comes just days after actress Amber Tamblyn told of suffering her own terrifying incident at the hands of an ex-partner.
Driver, 46, recounted the story in an interview with SiriusXM’s Pete Dominick.
“I was on vacation in Greece, and this guy kinda elbow-grabbed me and said: ‘You’re going to dance with me,'” she said.
“I said, ‘No’, and I pulled my arm away from him, and he grabbed me by the back of my hair. I tried to kick him, and then he punched me.”
Driver told the radio presenter the police were extremely casual about the ordeal and said it could have been avoided if she had simply complied.
“The way they presented it was ‘This guy was just having a good time, and if you’d gone along with it, it would’ve been fine. If you’d just danced with him, you wouldn’t be in this position that you’re in now,'” she said.
Driver’s story comes just days after Canadian Author Kelly Oxford urged women to share recollections on Twitter of the first time they were sexually assaulted. The request came after video was released of Donald Trump boasting about gabbing women on the genitals.
“Women, tweet me your first assaults. They aren’t just stats,” Oxford wrote, before adding her own recollection. “Old man on city bus grabs my ‘pussy’ and smiles at me, I’m 12.”
More than a million women responded with their own experiences.
Good Will Hunting actress Driver said assaults like these were common among the women in her life.
“I don’t know a woman who has not had some form of sexual assault at some point in their life,” she said.
“Whether it’s being manhandled, whether it’s being pushed around, or whether it’s actual physical aggression, or indeed being raped.”
Driver is currently in New York promoting her new ABC sitcom Speechless that aired its first episode last month.
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There would be few women on the planet today without a story such as as this, or worse.
I agree and it angers me to no end
I was gang raped by a bunch of first grade rugby league players - famous men at the time - but I blamed myself because I was drunk and vulnerable and never went to the police.
Oh Kate, that is so awful. I hope you are doing okay. I hope to one day live in a world where there is no question of coming forward, women are treated as any other victim of a serious crime, without question.
It's a lot easier to come forward today but at the time this happened (the 1980s) I would have been blamed for getting drunk. I couldn't be bothered going through all that and have some sneering police officers say to me 'well what did you expect'. Thankfully things are much different now.