Sonam Kapoor opened up about being molested as a teenager. The star took to her Instagram account to share a sneak peek into her interview with Femina, where she talks about the ordeal.
Sonam revealed that she was groped in a dark cinema hall when she was 13. When she complained about the incident to her school authorities, she was not taken seriously. Kapoor was told that groping wasn’t molestation, as everybody gets groped. “The level of awareness in our schools is so low; there is no sex education and teachers are not equipped to handle such cases. Our education system just does not know any better. Girls slip into depression. They blame themselves and it’s a horrible place to be in,” she says in the interview.
She also adds that her father is a feminist and everyone was treated equally at home. “My father (actor Anil Kapoor) is a feminist. He has always appreciated the parenting that Serena and Venus Williams received, and wanted to be that ambitious for his daughters. I was never treated like a girl. And I would never insult women by saying that I was treated like a boy. All three of us (one brother, two sisters) were treated equally. And yes, my dad and mum tried to protect me and my siblings as much as they could,” she adds.
Sonam first spoke about the molestation last year at a roundtable hosted by film critic Rajeev Masand. Bollywood actresses have recently begun to speak against a culture of sexism at all levels, including in Bollywood.
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Last August, Sonam criticised Bollywood for being patriarchal, and said that women were routinely judged on how they looked, and whether they were pregnant or not; not by what they were capable of.
Read: Sonam Kapoor Speaks About Surviving Child Sexual Abuse; Activists Say Silence Feeds This Epidemic
Incidentally, veteran Hollywood actress Jane Fonda in a recent interview with fellow Oscar winner Brie Larson for The Edit, revealed that she was a rape survivor and had suffered sexual abuse as a child.
“To show you the extent to which a patriarchy takes a toll on females – I’ve been raped, I’ve been sexually abused as a child and I’ve been fired because I wouldn’t sleep with my boss and I always thought it was my fault; that I didn’t do or say the right thing. I know young girls who’ve been raped and didn’t even know it was rape. They think, ‘It must have been because I said no the wrong way’. One of the great things the women’s movement has done is to make us realise that [rape and abuse is] not our fault. We were violated and it’s not right,” she said.
Fonda has been an advocate for women’s rights and supporter of the Rape Foundation and Rape Treatment Centre in Los Angeles. Unknown to many, her mother, Frances Ford Seymour, was sexually abused as a child. She eventually took her own life at 42, when Fonda was 12.
While many actresses these days are coming out with their stories of abuse and being vocal about women’s rights, activists believe that since sexuality is repressed in a society that mostly caters to men’s rights, the path to women’s freedom from all kinds of abuse will take miles to go.
Feature Image: E Online