Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay reveals she was raped in her 30s: 'I couldn't process it'

On Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Capt. Olivia Benson has been bringing justice to survivors of sexual violence for more than two decades. Now the actress behind the iconic character is ready to tell her own story.

In a powerful essay published by PEOPLE on Wednesday, Mariska Hargitay reveals that she was raped in her 30s by a man whom she had thought of as a friend.

"It wasn't sexual at all. It was dominance and control. Overpowering control," writes Hargitay, 59. "I tried all the ways I knew to get out of it. I tried to make jokes, to be charming, to set a boundary, to reason, to say no. He grabbed me by the arms and held me down. I was terrified. I didn't want it to escalate to violence. I now know it was already sexual violence, but I was afraid he would become physically violent. I went into freeze mode, a common trauma response when there is no option to escape. I checked out of my body."

Hargitay explains that she "couldn't process" what she went through for a long time because she "couldn't believe that it happened. That it could happen."

"So I cut it out. I removed it from my narrative," she writes. "I now have so much empathy for the part of me that made that choice because that part got me through it. It never happened. Now I honor that part: I did what I had to do to survive."

For a long time, he actress, producer, and advocate focused on building her Joyful Heart foundation to "help survivors of abuse and sexual violence heal."

"I think I also needed to see what healing could look like," Hargitay writes. "I look back on speeches where I said, 'I'm not a survivor.' I wasn't being untruthful; it wasn't how I thought of myself. I occasionally had talked about what this person did to me, but I minimized it."

Hargitay's husband, Peter Hermann, remembers how she used to say things like, "I mean, it wasn't rape." But after she began talking about it more with the people closest to her who "were the first ones to call it what it was," things started "shifting" in her.

"They were gentle and kind and careful, but their naming it was important," Hargitay says. "It wasn't a confrontation, like 'You need to deal with what happened,' it was more like looking at it in the light of day: 'Here is what it means when someone rapes another person, so on your own time, it could be useful to compare that to what was done to you.' Then I had my own realization. My own reckoning. Now I'm able to see clearly what was done to me."

That she was assaulted by someone she thought was a friend has inspired Hargitay to talk more about acquaintance rape, "because many people still think of rape as a man jumping out of the bushes. This was a friend who made a unilateral decision," she writes. "As for justice, it's important to know that it may look different for each survivor. For me, I want an acknowledgment and an apology. I'm sorry for what I did to you. I raped you. I am without excuse. That is a beginning. I don't know what is on the other side of it, and it won't undo what happened, but I know it plays a role in how I will work through this."

If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, please contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.

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