See Also: Teri Hatcher (Susan Mayer) People Guide

After bravely revealing she was sexually abused as a child to Vanity Fair recently, Teri Hatcher (Susan Mayer) broke down as she spoke about her painful past publicly for the first time last week.

"It's the first time I've kind of gone to this personal place for myself," she said at a press conference to promote the third annual Women's World Awards, according to ExtraTV.com. "It's a choice to not remain silent and its a choice to raise our voices in a strong way. To say to perpetrators that we are not going to be silent anymore."

She also said it was important for victims to not blame themselves. "There are many women who suffer with these traumatic experiences their whole lives, and they keep those things a secret," she said, according to USATODAY.com. "They spend some of their lives feeling that the fault of things that have happened to them was something that they caused. These experiences ... leave us with a choice, a choice to use our experiences to enlighten and empower and change people's lives, and that is a choice I am getting behind."

Hatcher was herself honored with a Women's World Award last year, and is throwing her weight behind the 2006 awards. According to the Women's World Awards website, they exist to "raise the awareness of the particular problems women face and understands itself as a constantly growing resource supporting organizations, companies, universities, schools, political parties and associations in promoting and implementing gender equality at all levels."

The original items on the awards can be found here at ExtraTV.com and USATODAY.com. More on the awards, including pictures of Hatcher with awards host Mikhail Gorbachev, can be found here here.

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