Teri Hatcher Still Haunted by Molestation

May 3, 2006 — -- In 2002, Teri Hatcher, not yet a "Desperate Housewife," was visiting her mother in Sunnyvale, Calif., when she saw a newspaper article about 14-year-old Sarah van Cleemput, who had committed suicide. Sarah had been molested, and the man implicated was Hatcher's uncle.

"The way she did it with the wrapping her head in the towel so she didn't make a mess when she shot herself. … I so understood her pain," Hatcher, 41, said.

In that moment, Hatcher decided to break her long silence. She contacted authorities and revealed for the first time that her uncle, Richard Hayes Stone, had molested Hatcher when she was 5 to 8 years old.

"What you walk away with, what you remember as an adult, is what haunts you," Hatcher said. "You know, this overwhelming feeling like that you could anticipate it and you participated. That's why those perpetrators are so good at what they do. That's where something like what Sarah did comes from, not being able to reconcile that. It's awful."

Hatcher's testimony was instrumental in persuading Stone to plead guilty to four counts of child molestation of two girls. The 64-year-old received a 14-year prison sentence.

"I think what she did was courageous and heroic," said Chuck Dillingham, the deputy district attorney prosecuting Stone. "Had Teri Hatcher not come forward in this case, I'm quite convinced the case would have been dismissed."

Coming forward with her story to the public took a little longer.

"I believed that if I came forward, it would end up in the tabloids and it would, you know, mar me forever and define me as the out-of-work, crazy, abused actress," Hatcher said. "And once I found out from the DA that they really needed help because they didn't have that strong of a case, it really wasn't a question."

Hatcher finally went public with the secrets of her past in the March issue of Vanity Fair. The revelation forced her parents to slowly absorb the truth about the man who had married into their family.