Melissa Gilbert is speaking out after Megyn Kelly called 15-year-olds “barely legal.”
The award-winning actress, 61, joined social media users in the #IWasFifteen trend and called out Kelly in an Instagram post after the conservative pundit issued a bizarre defense of deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Kelly, 54, drew outrage last week when she asserted in an episode of her eponymous podcast that Epstein “was not a pedophile,” citing a source who claimed that “he was into the barely legal type—like, he liked 15-year-old girls.”
“I’m just giving you facts that he wasn’t into, like, eight-year-olds,” she said. “But he liked the very young teen types that could pass for even younger than they were, but would look legal to a passerby.”
Kelly—herself the mother of a 14-year-old girl—swiftly sparked a torrent of criticism, including from Gilbert, who was 15 when she filmed a kissing scene with then-23-year-old co-star Dean Butler for the Western drama Little House on the Prairie.
“After seeing many women’s posts with the hashtags #iwasfifteen #imfifteen #iwasachild, I decided to Google search myself at that age and see what came up,” Gilbert wrote on Instagram. “Now, at this age, at this time, I am actually nauseated.”
The Emmy and Golden Globe-nominated actress posted three pictures of herself when she was 15, including two with Butler on the set of their hit series.
“The girl on vacation in Hawaii with her family is the same girl who was expected to ‘fall in love with’ and kiss a man on film who was several years older than she was. Through the lens of today, this is shocking,” she wrote.
“Thank God my mom and Michael [Landon] and so many others were there to make sure I was safe. Can you imagine if I hadn’t had them all? I am so fortunate (Sort of),” she went on. “Many other young women aren’t. @megynkelly you need to be careful with your words.”
The Daily Beast has reached out to Butler’s agent for comment. The actor, 69, told PEOPLE magazine last year that he wished he and Gilbert had been “closer in age” when they were filming.
Later on in the podcast episode, Kelly goes on to state that she began to view Epstein as an “actual” pedophile after Attorney General Pam Bondi announced that the convicted sex offender possessed child sexual abuse material.
“For the first time, I thought, ‘Oh no, he was an actual pedophile,’” she said. “You can say that’s a distinction without a difference. I think there is a difference. There’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old, you know?”
The remark prompted backlash from another actress, according to Buzzfeed News.
The Addams Family star Christina Ricci, 45, reposted on her Instagram Stories a quote that read: “There’s definitely a difference between a 5-year-old and a 15-year-old. But that difference is not ‘whether or not sleeping with them makes you a pedophile.’”
“This woman is a danger to children,” she wrote.
Kelly did not immediately return a request for comment on Sunday.
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