Gloria Estefan goes on to talk about being sexually abused by a family member when she was just 9 years old.
During the interview for life stories documentary series Threadthe eight-time Grammy-winning singer, 66, was asked about the incident, which she previously opened up about years ago to help other survivors.
Looking back, Estefan called her abuser “a predator of the worst kind.”
She started spending time with him to learn music. “My mother heard that one of my dad’s relatives had a wonderful classical music school,” Estefan said, adding that her parents thought it would be good for her to study music alongside her singing. “My dad was delighted that I could learn classical guitar.”
Estefan went on to explain that it took her a whole year to “build up the courage to tell my mom what’s going on with that man.”
Gloria and Emilio Estefan, Cuba Gooding Jr. and others attended the opening of Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant in Miami Beach
Her reluctance to talk about it, she said, comes from fear. “I think I was even more scared because I knew it was getting to the point where he was going to do something irreversible to me,” Estefan said. – I knew I had to avoid it at all costs.
But that fear and silence caused stress for the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom, she explained. I lost a hair from my anxiety, she remarked. Her hair loss and the fact that she was “constantly making excuses” for not going to class were “very strong clues” to what she was going through, Estefan recalled.
Elsewhere in the conversation, Estefan revealed certain things parents can do to try to “prevent” things like this from happening.
She said that “armament [kids] with tools like talking to them openly about it, telling them ‘you can always tell mum or dad whatever’s going on'” would help. “There are ways we can prevent that from happening and of course leave those predators behind behind bars, because they wouldn’t get away with it.”
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Gloria Estefan. Paul Archuleta/Getty Images
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Estefan revealed her past trauma for the first time in the 2021 episode of the series Red Table Talk: The Estefans on Facebook Watch, with niece Lili Estefan (56) and daughter Emily Estefan (29) by her side.
“He was in a position of power because my mother put me in his music school and he immediately started telling her how talented I was and how I needed special attention, and she was happy that he was focusing such attention on me,” she said of the abuser at the time. “He said it like, ‘Oh, you’re so good at this and let me teach you whatever.’ ”
“It starts little by little,” she warned. “And then it goes fast.”
If you or someone you know has been sexually assaulted, contact the National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or go to rainn.org.
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Source: HIS Education