Meredith Vieira Opens Up About Why She Stayed in an Abusive Relationship

By
ETONLINE

Meredith Vieira, 60, is using her talk show on September 17 as a platform to speak about an issue that is close to home.

In light of recent news of the video that surfaced of football player Ray Rice punching his wife, Vieira is speaking out about how she is a survivor of domestic violence.


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She starts out by giving the alarming statistic, "Every 9 seconds a woman is abused or assaulted in this country."

She then opens up about what happened to her in an abusive relationship with a man she loved who threatened to ruin her career. She describes in detail, "…he threw me into a shower, naked with scalding water and then he threw me outside into the hallway, we lived in an apartment building and I hid in the stairwell for two hours until he came again crying, 'I promise I won’t do this again.' I continued to stay in that relationship until I was offered a job in another state and that's where I felt I had the ability to get away."

The talk show host was asked the question of who would stay in that situation and explains, "I had a job at the time and I kept in this relationship and I've done a lot of thinking about why and I think part of it was fear. I was scared of him."

Vieira inspires her viewers by saying that this issue is more than just one with the NFL and she encourages women to "just let somebody know" if they're in an abusive relationship. "It's an issue with all of our lives and until we take it seriously more and more women are going to get abused."

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The #WhyIStayed and #WhyILeft hashtags seen on Twitter as confessions are part of a campaign to encourage survivors of domestic abuse to share their stories.

The Meredith Vieira Show debuted on September 8. Tune in for tomorrow's episode of The Meredith Vieira Show to see her share her personal story.

Watch our exclusive with Terry Crews talking about Ray Rice and his own experiences with domestic violence in the video below.