Mo'Nique's Brother Finally Admits and Apologizes for Abuse
Mo'Nique had deep inspiration for her part in the Oscar-nominated movie, Precious. As a child, her brother physically and sexually assaulted her, and he finally came clean about the abuse on the Oprah Winfrey Show. MTV reports that Gerald Imes talked about the abuse and apologized to his sister.
"I'm here today to first acknowledge that I've been in denial for 37 years. ... I did assault and inappropriately touch my sister in manners that were uncomfortable for her," Imes said on Oprah. "And for that, I apologize and I'm humbly sorry that those actions had taken place."
He went on to talk about how the abuse started and the part that drugs and alcohol played. "I hid my own molestation and pain and guilt and shame, because I thought it was my fault that these things happened to me. So I internalized that, and I hid behind the drugs and alcohol and then that spiraling thing in my mind, as a child, I wanted to express my sexuality, so I took it out on my sister. . . The drugs weren't an excuse. They just allowed me and afforded me the opportunity to do the things that were in the back of my mind as a kid that I always wanted to do," he said. "Most of the time, the abuse that I did with my sister took place while she was asleep [or] the appearance that she was asleep."
He followed up by saying he apologizes and didn't realize until recently the extent of the pain he had caused her, and another victim he abused, for which he was sentenced to 12 years in prison.
"The hardest part for me was even to admit to her I did something wrong," he said. "I downplayed it by saying, 'If you think I did it ... .' There's no more 'if you think' — I did it. I did it. I'm not proud of it. Mo'Nique, I'm sorry. I can only hope that by coming forth today that somewhere along the line with the apology that, yes, hopefully somewhere, somehow as siblings we can come back together. . . I'm doing this to apologize to my sister, to hopefully bring back some family unity. I'm doing this to publicly acknowledge. Now let's bring our family back together."