I Was Raped By My Cousin At Age 9 – Oprah Winfrey Reveals Painful Past

Talk show host Oprah Winfrey has opened up about her painful past revealing she once had a son at the age of 14 but he passed away.

The media mogul opened up about the tragic time while giving a speech at the Rod Laver Arena in Australia on December 2.

At the event she talked for about two hours sharing

the wisdom gathered from what Oprah described as “37,000 interviews conducted over a quarter-century hosting a daytime television show”.

During her show called ‘An evening with Oprah’, she revealed that “I did an interview with a reporter before I came to Australia and she said you should name the baby son who died. So I have named him, I had a little boy named Canaan. I did have a son. And I named him Canaan because Canaan means new land, new life.”

Oprah Winfrey spoke movingly about the sexual abuse she suffered as a young girl, which resulted in the pregnancy.

She revealed “I was raped at 9 years old by a cousin, then again by another family member, and another family member. I took to my bed and cried for three days. I felt devastated. Wounded. Betrayed. How could this person do this to me? I imagined that every person on the street was going to point their finger at me and scream, ‘Pregnant at 14, you wicked girl … expelled!’ And I soon realized that having the secret out was liberating. What I learned for sure was that holding the shame was the greatest burden of all.”

Winfrey is best known for her talk show The Oprah Winfrey Show, which was the highest-rated program of its kind in history and was nationally syndicated from 1986 to 2011.