Mariska Hargitay has revealed how her husband, Peter Hermann, reacted to her revelation that she was sexually assaulted by a friend when she was in her 30s.
The Law & Order: SVU star admitted that she was in denial about the attack for a long time until she told her husband, who confirmed that she had been raped.
Supportive husband
"So many people blame themselves, myself included," Mariska said of the sexual assault on Alex Cooper's Call Her Daddy podcast.
"I couldn't process that I couldn't get out of it. I have gotten out of so many things through my intellect, through comedy, through just outsmarting it."
She continued: "I couldn't get out of this. That just lived in me, and so I blamed myself. Then it got to the point where it just became so clear what happened."
Recalling the moment she told her now 57-year-old husband, whom she married in 2004, Mariska added: "I told my husband, and he said, he looked at me like, 'Mariska, you said that you were never sexually assaulted. You were.'
"That's why I understand about denial and dissociating. I'm grateful for that part of myself that kept me safe, for that part of myself that said, 'You're not ready to deal with it.'
"There's no blame," she added. "We have to support ourselves. We have to be ready. We have to build an infrastructure within ourselves and external support, so that we know that we'll be heard and that we'll be understood and that the timing is right."
Mariska revealed that she had been sexually assaulted in a personal essay for People in January 2024.
She wrote: "A man raped me in my thirties. It wasn't sexual at all. It was dominance and control. Overpowering control. He was a friend. Then he wasn't.
"I tried all the ways I knew to get out of it. I tried to make jokes, to be charming, to set a boundary, to reason, to say no. He grabbed me by the arms and held me down.
"I was terrified. I didn't want it to escalate to violence. I now know it was already sexual violence, but I was afraid he would become physically violent."
She continued: "I went into freeze mode, a common trauma response when there is no option to escape. I checked out of my body.
"I couldn't process it. I couldn't believe that it happened. That it could happen. So I cut it out. I removed it from my narrative.
"I now have so much empathy for the part of me that made that choice because that part got me through it. It never happened. Now I honor that part: I did what I had to do to survive."
Time to tell
Explaining why she penned the essay, Mariska told Alex: "I was just ready and that felt like a gift.
"There was no shame. There was no stigma. There was no fear. I was unencumbered because of the work that I had done on it. I had some work to do to process it, and I was so happy to."