Blake Lively, currently embroiled in a headline-generating feud with Justin Baldoni and others, has revealed that her mother was assaulted years before she was born.
Accepting her honoree nomination at last night’s Time100 Gala, the It Ends With Us star said that at her mother’s “urging and unwavering bravery, she wanted me to share with you that she is a survivor of the worst crimes someone can commit against a woman.”
Delivering a toast last night at the gala, Lively said her mother, Willie Elain McAlpin, who was present, had “never got justice from her work acquaintance who attempted to take her life when she was the mother of three young kids—years before I was born.”
According to Lively, her mother was saved from the experience by an assault survivor who she had previously heard speak about her pain on the radio.
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“The woman painfully and graphically shared how she escaped, and because of hearing that woman speak to her experience instead of shutting down in fear and unfair shame, my mom is alive today,” said Lively. “She was saved by a woman whose name she’ll never know. I am alive, and standing with you all here today, being honored, because of a woman whose name I’ll never know. I am here, my mom is here, because that woman not only survived, but she told others how.”
Lively described this experience as a “silent torch of womanhood that we come to know—a pact that privately we must show others how to survive, literally or spiritually.”
She paid tribute to “incredible” fellow Time100 Honoree Gisèle Pelicot, the French woman who attended every day of the trial of her husband and dozens of men accused of drugging, raping and assaulting her late last year.
Lively swerved the elephant in the room, Baldoni, only briefly alluding to the saga by noting: “I have so much to say about the last two years of my life, but tonight is not the forum.”
A few hours prior, Deadline revealed that Lively and her publicist had been accused by Baldoni and his PR team of a “ploy to obtain subpoena power.” The overwhelming dispute began late last year when Lively filed a suit accusing Baldoni of harassment and strategizing to “destroy her reputation” on the It Ends With Us set.
The post Blake Lively Reveals Her Mother Was Assaulted Years Before She Was Born appeared first on Deadline.
