“90210” star AnnaLynne McCord revealed that she was sexually assaulted in her own home and felt like she “did not have a voice.”
The 25-year-old actress made her comments at a September 22 benefit for the Somaly Mam Foundation, which aims to end slavery and human trafficking.
“Has anyone ever been raped? Sexually abused? Not said ‘no’ when you felt you didn’t have the right to?” McCord asked the audience. “I know what it feels like.”
McCord was on-hand to host an auction to raise money for the Foundation and opened up to Us Weekly magazine about her speech.
“I had a very similar experience to what these girls go through 20 times a night,” McCord told Us Weekly, referring the abused women the Somaly Mam Foundation works 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.'”
“It was 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,” McCord continued. “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.”
McCord, who plays snobby Naomi Clark on the CW teen drama series “90210,” has worked with the Somaly Mam Foundation for several years and visits victims in Cambodia each Christmas.
In July 2011, McCord made headlines for her romance with the significantly older Australian “Prison Break” actor Dominic Purcell, 42.
The two are set to star together in the upcoming crime drama film “Officer Down” with David Boreanaz from the shows “Bones” and “Buffy The Vampire Slayer.” The film also stars Stephen Dorff and James Woods and is set for release in 2012.
McCord previously dated “Twilight” actor Kellan Lutz, but the two broke up in November 2010.
The fifth season of “90210” is slated to premiere on October 8 at 8 p.m. ET on The CW.