Mariska Hargitay Recalls Being Raped By A Friend In Emotional Essay

“I did what I had to do to survive,” the “Law & Order: SVU” star said of her experience.

For the first time, actor Mariska Hargitay is opening up about having been raped in her 30s by a former male friend.

In an essay for People published Wednesday, the “Law and Order: SVU” actor recalled attempting “to set a boundary” between herself and her alleged rapist, whom she did not name. After he assaulted her, Hargitay wrote, she went into “freeze mode, a common trauma response when there is no option to escape.”

“It wasn’t sexual at all. It was dominance and control,” she wrote. “I couldn’t process it. I couldn’t believe that it happened. That it could happen. So I cut it out. I removed it from my narrative.”

In 2004, Hargitay founded the Joyful Heart Foundation, a New York-based advocacy group for survivors of sexual assault and domestic violence. Speaking to People in 2020, she said investigating sex crimes as “SVU” character Olivia Benson had endeared her to real-life survivors. “People used to call me the accidental activist,” she told the magazine.

As the public face of the organization, however, the Golden Globe winner recalled giving several speeches in which she denied being a sexual assault survivor herself ― just one example, she noted in her essay this week, of her efforts to minimize the trauma she experienced.