Teri Hatcher Molested as Child

Teri Hatcher, star of TV's "Desperate Housewives," revealed to Vanity Fair in an interview that she was molested as a child by an uncle 35 years ago. Hatcher, 41, said that in 2002 she learned a 14-year-old who Hatcher's uncle, Richard Hayes Stone, had molested committed suicide, and Stone himself had been arrested and charged with three counts of molestation.

Stone admitted to having a passionate kiss with the suicide victim, Sarah Van Cleemput. Worried that Stone would escape prosecution, Hatcher decided to put aside her fears of media reprisal and bring to light her own stories of molestation. "Here's what I anticipated," Hatcher told E! "He did this, he gets off, and Teri ends up on the cover of a tabloid."

That being said, however, it was Teri's statements that sealed the case, as Stone later pleaded guilty to four counts of child molestation and was sentenced to 14 years in prison. "Without Teri, this case would have been dismissed," Chuck Gillingham, the Santa Clara County deputy district attorney involved in the case, told Vanity Fair. "I have so much respect for what she did. This is a person who had nothing to gain and a lot to lose. But she volunteered to talk about the most heinous thing that could happen to a child, with no upside for her...it takes a person with a lot of emotional fortitude to do that; heroic is a word that doesn't even do it justice. She is a damn good person, and she knew what the right thing to do was."