Film Director Tyler Perry Reveals Childhood Sexual Abuse

Film director Tyler Perry posted a letter to his website Tuesday detailing a traumatic past of childhood sexual and physical abuse. Tyler revealed his father  abused him and his mother and he thought he “would die before I grew up.”

In a moving letter posted to his website on Tuesday, Tyler Perry wrote that his father once “beat me until the skin was coming off my back.” He also said his father beat his mother repeatedly and molested one of his childhood friends.

In addition to the abuse suffered at the hands of his father, Tyler Perry also wrote he was sexually abused by one of his mother’s female friends and by a man he knew from church.

“To know that the little boy that I was went through all that — he went through and made it. Then me, as a man … I have to take on the responsibility of forgiving all of those people,” Tyler said in his post. “I owe it to that little boy that I was and, more than that, I owe it to the man that I am.”