Skip to Content

AnnaLynne McCord hosted an event in Los Angeles on September 22 to benefit the Somaly Mam Foundation, an organization that aims end slavery and human trafficking around the world.

During her speech, the 90210 star admitted to her own experience with sexual assault.

“Has anyone ever been raped? Sexually abused? Not said ‘no’ when you felt you didn’t have the right to?” McCord said at the event. “I know what it feels like.”

AnnaLynne McCord Image
(Getty Images for Visionary Women)
 

Following her moving words, McCord shared a few more with Us Weekly.

“I had a very similar experience to what these girls go through 20 times a night,” McCord said of the victims the foundation aims to help.

“It happened to me once by somebody that I knew, and it is a very interesting thing to feel that you do not have the voice to say ‘no.’ It wasn’t an attack or anything like that — I just had no voice. I did not know how to say, ‘I don’t want this. Please do not do this to me.'”

McCord went into a bit more detail and explained her incident as “a situation where I found myself in my own home being hospitable, and that hospitality was taken advantage of at an extreme level.

“I did not have a voice, and now I do, and I’m practicing using my voice for others. Finally I can say I was taken advantage of – not from my own shame that I did something to deserve that – and now I can have a clear conscience.”

We admire the star for speaking out and we wish her the best of luck in fighting back against this important cause.