Mariska Hargitay
Virginia Sherwood/NBC
Mariska Hargitay has spoken about her complex emotional response and ultimately the trauma she endured for years after being raped by a friend in her 30s.
“I couldn't process it. I couldn't believe it happened. That it could happen. So I cut it out. I removed it from my narrative. I now have so much compassion for the part of me that made that decision, because that part got me through it. It never happened. Now I honor that part: I did what I had to do to survive,” the Law & Order and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit star said in an emotional essay in People magazine on Wednesday.
Like many rape victims, Hargitay knew her attacker. “He was a friend, then he wasn’t. I tried every way I knew to get out of it. I tried to joke, to be charming, to set a boundary, to argue, to say no,” she recalls.
To avoid physical violence, Hargitay said she froze instead of fighting back, a decision that raised questions for years. “I now know it was already sexual violence, but I was afraid he would become physically violent. I went into freeze mode, a common trauma response when there is no way to escape. I left my body,” she continued in the essay.
In 2004, Hargitay founded the Joyful Heart Foundation and became a strong advocate for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. But in her opinion, she was barely able to erase the memory of her own sexual assault.
Years later, as Hargitay approaches her 60th birthday, she wants to go beyond the confidence and courage that her TV character, Captain Olivia Benson on NBC's “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit,” brought to others , and advocate for more responsibility.
“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 wrote. And Hargitay is seeking legal reform to combat the crimes of rape and other sexual violence.
“I want this violence to end. Sexual violence does not exist because of something immutable in our human existence, it exists because there are power structures in place that allow it. These power structures are so pervasive that no one is immune from them,” she explained.
As for her attacker, Hargitay wants to put the blame where it belongs: on her attacker.
“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,” the People essay reads.
After a reckoning after years of shame, suffering and isolation, Hargitay feels a sense of renewal in her life. “I am renewed and filled with compassion for all of us who have suffered,” she concluded. “And I’m still proud of it.”