(Sunnyvale, California) Popular television and film actress Teri Hatcher has come forward and announced that she was molested by her uncle, Richard Hayes Stone, when she was a little girl. Hatcher contacted Santa Clara County prosecutor Chuck Gillingham to help in convicting Stone, 67, for molesting 14-year-old Sarah Van Cleemput who later committed suicide. Gillingham needed Hatcher's corroborating testimony.
From MercuryNews.com:
"She asked what I thought," about coming forward, Gillingham said of Hatcher. "I said, 'I'm going to beg you to be involved, as hard as that is for you.'"Hatcher tells her whole story in the April issue of Vanity Fair Magazine.
Gillingham flew down to Los Angeles with a Sunnyvale public safety officer to take Hatcher's statement.
"When we went to interview her, she almost canceled," Gillingham said. "But she had been with her daughter that morning and was thinking if, God forbid, something happened to her daughter that someone would come forward and do the right thing."
With a tape recording running, Hatcher explained in detail how her uncle -- the then-husband of her mother's sister -- allegedly molested her in the late 1960s and early '70s when she was no more than 7.
"Obviously she took a big risk doing the interview," Gillingham said.
After prosecutors gave the defense a transcript of Hatcher's interview, Stone pleaded guilty Oct. 24, 2002, leaving no need for a trial nor a court appearance for Hatcher.
Companion post at The Jawa Report.
Tags: Teri_Hatcher, sex_abuse
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