John Stamos has alleged that he was sexually abused as a child by a woman who was babysitting him.
The Fuller House star, 60, recalls the traumatic events for the first time in his forthcoming memoir, If You Would Have Told Me, scheduled to be released on 24 October.
Speaking to People in a new interview ahead of the book’s release, Stamos admitted that “it took me writing a book” to recognise his babysitter’s alleged actions were inappropriate.
“I mean, I knew, it was always in the back, and I do so much advocacy for the [survivors],” he said. “I felt like, I remembered it slightly. It has always been there, but I packed it away as people do, right?”
He said that at the time, he “didn’t tell” anyone, instead, he brushed it off as “Ah, it’s girls, man”.
“It was like you’re playing dead so they’ll stop. But it wasn’t totally aggressive,” Stamos added. “I don’t know, it was not good.”
The General Hospital alum remembers reflecting on the experience while prepping a speech for an award he received for his child abuse advocacy.
John Stamos— (Getty Images)
“I started to write it, and that’s when it really came out,” he remembered. He ultimately decided against including the anecdote, as he felt it might come off as “phony”.
“I thought, ‘No, tonight is not about me. It’s about the kids. I’m going to pack it away again until the right moment,” he recalled. “I didn’t want the headlines to be that.”
Stamos chose to keep the recollection in his memoir brief for that exact reason, he said. “It was a page or something, but I felt I had to talk about it. It was weird. It was something that, I think, I was probably like 10 or 11 [when it happened]. I shouldn’t have had to deal with those feelings,” he said.
While he feels that now is the right time to come forward with his survival story, he added: “But I’ll tell you, if I found out someone was doing that to my son, that’s a totally different story.”
Stamos shares his five-year-old son, Billy, with his second wife Caitlin McHugh, whom he married in 2018. He was married to fellow actor Rebecca Romijn (Ugly Betty) from 1998 to 2005.
If You Would Have Told Me will be released on 24 October.
If you are a child and you need help because something has happened to you, you can call the NSPCC free of charge on 0800 1111. You can also call the NSPCC if you are an adult and you are worried about a child, on 0808 800 5000. The National Association for People Abused in Childhood (Napac) offers support for adults on 0808 801 0331
