20 April,2010 02:13 PM IST | | Agencies
Academy award winner Mo'Nique was sexually abused during her childhood by her brother, who told talk show host Oprah Winfrey that he is sorry for betraying the trust of his sibling.
Appearing on the Oprah Winfrey Show on Monday, Gerald Imes said he molested Mo'Nique for over a year, when she was about seven and he was 13. "I abused and betrayed the trust of another sibling, my sister, my blood sister," Imes said.
"I'm sorry, Mo'Nique. I'm sorry...I betrayed everybody's trust. I broke that trust. I broke that bond," he said on the show. Imes said he decided to apologise to Mo'Nique as he wanted to bring their family back together. "Hopefully somewhere, somehow as siblings we can come back together as brother and sister," he said.
Imes claimed he too was molested and started using drugs and alcohol when he was 11. "I started using cocaine, heroine, and alcohol at the age of 11. I used these drugs to hide my own pain, to hide my own fears... The drugs allowed me and afforded me the opportunity to hurt my sister," he said.
He abused her at night when he thought Mo'Nique was asleep, and "it happened more than I wanted it to. I became a perpetrator". "The hardest part to me was for even to admit to her that I did something wrong. I downplayed it by saying, 'If you think I did something wrong, then I'm sorry.'...I did it, I'm not proud of it," he said. Imes further said he was "not a monster, but her older brother".
Mo'Nique's parents, who also appeared on the episode, said it was a "heartbreaking thing to accept". Winfrey said Mo'Nique did not want to appear on the show. "She said if your expressing what you had done to her could save one family then it would be worth it," Winfrey told Imes.
Mo'Nique, who won the best supporting actress Academy Award this year for her role in Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire', has previously discussed her brother's molestation in interviews.
