On The View‘s Feb. 24th episode, actress Gabrielle Union opened up about a traumatic incident she faced at age 19, when she was raped at gunpoint in the California shoe store where she worked.
The Being Mary Jane star explained her feelings following the incident by telling hosts Whoopi Goldberg, Jenny McCarthy and Sherri Shepherd, “You’re getting all of the attention and support and love that you’ve always wanted. But it’s not for something positive, and I hated that.”
“I hated feeling like the victim,” she adds. “I hated the cloak of victimhood. I got sick of people letting me off the hook.”
Union, who is engaged to basketball player Dwyane Wade, discussed her effort to move forward from the incident and “embrace being a survivor” by filing — and winning — a negligence lawsuit against Payless Shoes and graduating from UCLA with a degree in sociology.
Union’s attacker was later sentenced to 33 years in prison, according to Us Weekly.
“I wasn’t raised to be coddled,” Union says. “I was raised to be an independent woman, standing on my own two feet, and that’s the road I opted to take.”