Celebrity chef Tabitha Brown discusses rape

The Food Network star recently revealed that she was 15 when she was sexually assaulted.

Celebrity Chef Tabitha Brown is opening up about being a rape survivor and how she learned to heal and bounce back from the experience.

As PEOPLE reports, she revealed recently that she was raped at age 15. In a clip shared last month, Brown explained how she kept the attack secret for many years.

In the clip, Brown said the story of her rape isn’t new because she addressed it in “Feeding the Soul,” her first book. “I don’t know why this is so heavy on my heart, but I wanted to share this now.”

The Food Network star said the rape occurred at a hotel party she attended with two friends after she sneaked out of the house and took her mother’s car. Brown recalled a guy at the party she liked and “thought was cute,” she said. “I had known him, but didn’t really know him.”

She added, “That night, I ended up being raped by him, and it wasn’t like a brutal rape…Sometimes people hear ‘rape,’ they think that it has to be one way. It simply means I said ‘no’ and he wouldn’t stop.”

For many years, Brown blamed herself for the sexual assault because of how she came to be at the party. “I knew better,” she said. “And in my mind I convinced myself, ‘That’s what you get. You deserve that. Like that was your punishment’.”

Having gone through a reflective healing process as an adult, the cookbook author wants other rape survivors to know that they are not to blame if they were raped. “It is never your fault, Okay?,” she declared. “Doesn’t matter what you wore. Doesn’t matter where you went. Doesn’t matter what you did wrong, but under no circumstance is it ever your fault for getting raped.” 

She said until five years ago, only the two friends who were with her that night knew what happened. Ultimately, she decided to speak her truth after “God game me the word” that keeping what happened to her secret was making her sick.

“So I say to you — if you’ve been holding it in for so many different reasons, whether you think you’re guilty or that you deserved it; embarrassment, shame, whatever the case may be, it’s time to release it. Because your secret is making you sick. It wasn’t your fault.”

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