The Why Did I Get Married? director opened up about the molestation and abuse he suffered as a child growing up in New Orleans, Louisiana during an appearance on the Oprah Winfrey Show, which aired in America on Wednesday (20Oct10) – and there’s one “disgusting” encounter he’ll never forget.
Perry told Oprah he had been playing with a neighbourhood friend at his house when his pal’s mum took advantage of him.
He recalled, “I hear arguing from the living room, she comes in… We were in the bedroom. She throws him in the bathroom and says, ‘You need to take a bath and go to bed,’ and she tells me to go home, and I go to the door to try and unlock the door… and I couldn’t unlock it.
“She lays on the sofa and spreads her legs – I didn’t know she was wearing lingerie at the time – and I said, ‘I have to go home…’ And she lights a cigarette and she takes the key… and I come over to get it and she puts it inside of herself (vagina) and she tells me to get it, so I get the key but I feel my body betraying me… because I felt an erection.
“She pulled me on top of her and I was inside of her, so my first sexual experience with a woman… that was it.”
The encounter left him scarred when he started to be intimate with women much later on in life.
He explains, “I was so awkward… I didn’t know there were these triggers… I was with this girl and we were about to get into it (have sex) and she locks the door – click, click, click – I wasn’t able to make the connection, so she’s wondering what is wrong with me; I’m wondering what is wrong with me… I could not perform. I went from being stimulated and ready to go to not being able to perform.
“There is this next situation, where I’m with another woman that I really, really cared about… and she comes in the roiom, one day sex is great, the next day lingerie… it’s, ‘What is this?’ And I never made the connection to this.”
Perry revealed he was also sexually molested by a male neighbour, a nurse and a priest when he was a child.
