When it comes to his journey of healing, Charlamagne Tha God has been an open book. The radio and podcast host has often spoken out about the importance of mental health and recognizing ones own traumas, and in a recent sit-down with The Daily Blast, Charlamagne revealed that he has been molested as a child but did not recognize it as abuse because it was by a woman.
We have often seen headlines about teachers who are women abusing their students or even rappers discussing hiring prostitutes who are adult women to perform sex acts on their young sons. There are a select group of people who do not see this as molestation or sexual abuse, but Charlamagne said that it was a Tyler Perry interview that opened his eyes.
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“You know what’s so crazy, when I first watched that interview, I wasn’t nowhere doing no kind of work on myself,” he said. “I saw it in real-time back in the day when he was on Oprah. I watched him crying and I remember just saying to myself, ‘Well, what’s wrong with him?’ Because I think the way that men process sexual assault is different. We don’t look at it as sexual assault. We look at it as, ‘I was eight gettin’ it poppin’ with an older woman.'”
He said he remembered being with his friends at that young age “having conversations about being with older women back then.” Charlamagne admitted that he nor his friends believed they were being sexually assaulted and it wasn’t until he was in his late 30s that he began processing his experience differently.
“I just understood it more because you just don’t know what that did to you.” Watch CharlamagneThat God’s interview below.