Joan Collins recently revealed that her ex-husband Maxwell Reed raped her when she was only 17 years old.
Collins talked about the rape on the documentary, Brave Miss World and said that she had gone on a date with Reed and that he had drugged her drink.
She recalled waking up on a couch in the middle of the rape and said that although she knew it wasn’t her fault, she was still embarrassed about the situation.
“The next thing I knew, I was out flat on the sofa in that living room and he was raping me,” she said. “And what he had given me was a drug. He had drugged my drink. It wasn’t my fault but I didn’t know, I went out with him.”
Joan Collins finally speaks about the time she was raped by her future husband http://t.co/9YITiL4MdE pic.twitter.com/rCu86iNLiC
— Marie Claire (@marieclaireuk) December 1, 2014
Collins continued to date Reed and even married him because she was a virgin before he raped her and felt like it was what she was supposed to do. Collins later divorced Reed, and said that she was never happy during the marriage.
“I really hated him, but I was so filled with guilt, that he had done this thing to me,” she said.
Joan Collins agreed to share her story on the documentary in hope of inspiring other women to come forward with stories of their own rape and to not be ashamed of what happened to them.
Brave Miss World is the story of Linor Abargil, an Israeli beauty pageant contestant who won the Miss World beauty pageant in 1998.
Before competing in the Miss World competition, Linor had won Miss Israel and was sent to Milan to model.
She was raped by her travel agent while there and would go on to win Miss World just seven weeks later.
She vowed not to stay silent about her rape and hopes other women will feel empowered by her story.
The documentary is currently available on Netflix.
