The topic of domestic violence has dominated headlines in the past few weeks because of the controversy surrounding NFLer
and his wife, Janay. Now,
has joined the conversation by revealing her own shocking history with abuse.
She taped a segment that will air on her talk show this morning describing violence she suffered at the hands of a boyfriend years ago. (Vieira has been married to Richard Cohen since 1986.)
I was in an abusive relationship many, many years ago as a young woman. I want to explain to you why I stayed. It started out, I loved this guy. It started out, we'd have a fight and he'd just sort of grab my arm. I didn't think a lot about it, and then it turned into pushing me into a wall and then it went beyond that, to (his) actually taking his hand and grabbing my face and saying, 'I could ruin your career if I wanted to and no one would watch you.'
But, why did she stay?
I'm a smart woman … (and heard) a lot of people say, 'Well, who would stay in that situation?' Somebody who doesn't have the wherewithal to get out, the means to get out. (But) I had that. I had a job at the time, and I kept in this relationship. I've done a lot of thinking about why, and I think part of it was fear. I was scared of him. I was scared if I tried to leave something worse could happen to me. Part of it was guilt, because every time we would have a fight he would then start crying and say, 'I promise I won't do it again,' and I would feel like maybe I contributed somehow to this — and they are saying this about Ray Rice's wife, that it takes two to tango.
She recalled one particularly terrifying incident with her ex.
There was the night, we shared an apartment, and he threw me into a shower, naked with scalding water, and then he threw me outside into the hallway," she says. "We lived in an apartment building, and I hid in the stairwell for two hours until he came again, crying, 'I promise I won't do this again.'
She eventually got away, but emphasizes what a complicated problem domestic violence can be.
I continued to stay in that relationship until I was offered a job in another state and that's where I felt I had the ability to get away. … It's not so easy to just get away. You think it would be, but it's not. Having said that, if my daughter Lily, who is now 21, was in an abusive relationship, even if she thought she loved this man, I would say, 'Go. Just go.' We didn't have shelters when this was happening to me. There was no hotline. I would say call the hotline. … If you are going through this, get yourself to a shelter, by all means tell somebody what's going on, let somebody know. That's just my experience with it, and I know it's rampant in this country, and we all have to accept the fact that it's not just an issue with the
