Oprah Winfrey is unpacking her complicated family history.
The media mogul and talk show icon opened up about her teen pregnancy, including her father's intense reaction, during an interview on "On Purpose with Jay Shetty," released Wednesday, Sept. 16.
"I became pregnant at 14. I didn't even know that I was pregnant," Winfrey, 72, told host Jay Shetty. "And I'd been sent to live with my father. So, I was living with my mother, and I got sent away to live with my father. And when I came into the house, he hadn't seen me for years. And my father said, 'Well, I tell you one thing: You've been in Milwaukee, and you've not had the rules and regulations, but in this household, you do what I say.'"
Winfrey said her father's "rules" included a 10 p.m.
curfew and a strict stance on pregnancy.
"He said, 'I would rather see a daughter of mine floating down the Cumberland River, which is a river in Tennessee, than to bring shame on this family,'" Winfrey said. "I was already pregnant. And I knew that if my father found out, he would want to kill me."
However, Winfrey's father eventually learned the truth of her pregnancy during a doctor's visit, she said.
"I remember being sent to the doctor at 14 after my ankle [got swollen], and the doctor said, 'Either this is the biggest tumor I've ever seen, or your daughter is pregnant,' he said to my father," Winfrey said. "And my father's sense of shame, I took that shame on."
The Emmy-winning journalist said the baby "died a couple of weeks or a couple of months" after her appointment.
"I was in sort of a suspended reality," Winfrey said. "I'd gone back to school. Nobody at school knew because if anybody at school had known, I would have been kicked out. … And so, after the baby died, my father said to me, 'This is your second chance, and if I were you, I would take advantage of it.'"
Winfrey, who experienced a series of alleged sexual assaults since the age of 9, also shared the difficulty of discussing her past with her father, including an incident involving Winfrey's uncle.
"I was 42, and my father said, 'Well, was it really rape?' And I realized, oh, this is why I never told," Winfrey said. "And I said, 'Dad, I was 14, and he was 49. So, it would not have mattered if I had walked into the room buck naked. He had the responsibility of an adult.'"
Oprah Winfrey shares what 'freed' her from 'shame' of childhood sexual abuse
Following her pregnancy, Winfrey said she became committted to perfectionism.
"I became a major overachiever, speaker, winning every contest, getting all the grades, doing all the things that were about performing," Winfrey told Shetty. "And I was doing that to prove that I was worthy of being a good person."
Despte her achievements, Winfrey said she still "carried the shame" of the alleged sexual abuse she suffered as a child. "The Oprah Winfrey Show" host said it wasn't until she was 42 and did an episode in which she interviewed several child molesters that she began to gain a different perspective.
"Even though I was telling everybody else, and I'd read all the books and I'd done all the research and interviewed many people saying, 'It's not your fault,' there was a part of me that felt that my 9-year-old self was still responsible," said Winfrey, going on to describe an interview she did with a man who plotted the grooming of his 13-year-old stepdaughter.
"He started out by playing games. … And then he said, 'One day, it took me six months to get to the point where I felt I was comfortable enough to touch her breasts,'" Winfrey recalled. "And he said, 'I just rubbed up against her breast, but I held my arm there too long. And she said, "Hey, what are you doing?"' … 'I went and told the wife, and I got to her before her daughter did because I knew that if I got to her before her daughter did, she would believe me and not her daughter.'"
Winfrey, who began to get choked up, said the candid conversation "freed me because I realized for the first time it was planned," adding that "every kid who has been molested was set up."
"Now a girl gets pregnant, the family embraces it: the child is adopted, they bring the child into the family. It's not the scarlet letter, and you have brought shame upon this family," Winfrey said. "But in my family at the time, it was scorned. It was a really bad thing. And I thought of myself as this person who can achieve a lot, but I have this thing behind me. It was my greatest shame."
If you or someone you know has experienced sexual violence, RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline offers free, confidential, 24/7 support to survivors and their loved ones in English and Spanish at: 800-656-HOPE (4673) and Hotline.RAINN.org and en Español RAINN.org/es.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Oprah Winfrey recalls father's 'shame' about her teen pregnancy
