Valerie Bertinelli Breaks Silence

Actress and television personality Valerie Bertinelli is opening up about a painful chapter from her childhood as she prepares to release her upcoming memoir, Getting Naked, on March 10.

In an interview published Wednesday, March 4, the 65-year-old star revealed that she was sexually abused at age 11 — a trauma she says she is only now ready to speak about publicly after years of personal healing.

“I guess because I’m healing from it, it’s not so scary anymore,” Bertinelli said. “I can say it out loud. I was sexually assaulted. It doesn’t feel like it owns me anymore.”

According to Bertinelli, the revelation surfaced while she was writing Getting Naked. The book was originally intended to focus on self-acceptance, but as she worked through the manuscript, she found herself confronting deeper emotional truths and decided to include them.

To illustrate that chapter of her life, Bertinelli chose to include a photograph of herself at age 11 — the same age she says the abuse occurred — as a way of acknowledging the young girl at the center of the story.

Bertinelli first rose to fame on the classic sitcom One Day at a Time, starring alongside Bonnie Franklin and Mackenzie Phillips, before building a long career in television and publishing. In recent years, she has also become known for her work on Food Network and for writing bestselling cookbooks.

She said the process of confronting her childhood trauma took time. Bertinelli explained that it took at least a decade before she could say the experience out loud, even to a therapist. Early attempts to process it brought difficult emotions to the surface before she eventually began to feel progress.

The journey has included moments of setback. Toward the end of 2024, she experienced a severe anxiety attack that made her realize she still had more work to do.

Now, Bertinelli says she understands that the shame she carried for years had little to do with body image — something she has spoken about publicly in the past — and more to do with unresolved trauma.

The actress, who was previously married to rock guitarist Eddie Van Halen, says telling the story in her memoir is part of reclaiming her voice and acknowledging the survivor she has become.