John Stamos reveals he was sexually abused by babysitter in memoir

Last August, John Stamos — one of the best-known faces on television — turned 60 years old. And the milestone seems to have triggered a wish to reflect on his almost 40-year-long career in Hollywood. On October 24, he will release his memoir, If You Would Have Told Me. On Wednesday, People magazine published several extracts from the book, as well as an interview, in which the Californian actor talks about the most difficult chapters of his life, such as his high-profile breakup with Rebecca Romijn, his subsequent alcohol addiction and the sexual abuse he suffered as a child from his babysitter, which he claims he himself had forgotten about until he began to write his memoir.

According to Stamos, he was not aware that his babysitter’s actions were inappropriate until he was an adult. “It took me to writing an entire book,” he tells People magazine. The actor — known for playing Uncle Joey on Full House, one of the most successful TV shows of the 1980s and 1990s — reflects on how he realized what had happened to him. Stamos says that he had always been a spokesperson and defender of children who had suffered abuse, and even received awards for his work. In fact, it was while he was preparing an acceptance speech for one award that it clicked.

“I started to write it, and that’s when it really came out,” he recalls. “And then I thought, ‘No, tonight is not about me. It’s about the kids. I’m going to pack it away again until the right moment,’” he continues. “Otherwise, I’m a phony fuck. It’s like, ‘Come on.’”

For Stamos, it was important that the night be about the children. “I didn’t want the headlines to be that, and I didn’t want the book to be over that,” he explains. “It was a page or something, but I felt I had to talk about it. It was weird. It was something that, I think, I was probably like 10 or 11 [when it happened]. I shouldn’t have had to deal with those feelings.”

According to Stamos, he knew there was something driving his work “It was always in the back,” he says. “I do so much advocacy for the [survivors]. I felt like, I remembered it slightly. It has always been there, but I packed it away as people do, right?”

At that time he didn’t tell anyone, he just said to himself: “‘Ah, it’s girls, man.’” He remembers, “It was like you’re playing dead so they’ll stop. But it wasn’t totally aggressive,” he recalls. “I don’t know, it was not good.”

Stamos has been in a relationship with actress and model Caitlin McHugh Stamos, 37, since 2016. They met on a set in 2011 and met again years later. They married in early 2018 and that year, in April, they welcomed their only child, a boy named Billy, who is now five years old. “I’ll tell you, if I found out someone was doing that to my son,” he says, “that’s a totally different story.”

In If You Would Have Told Me, Stamos also talks about his first marriage to Californian model Rebecca Romijn. The couple met in 1994 during a Victoria’s Secret fashion show in which she was modelling, and married in 1998. They announced their separation in 2004 and officially divorced in March 2005. At the end of that year, she got engaged to actor Jerry O’Connell, whom she married in the summer of 2007. A year later, they had twin girls.

But the divorce received a lot of media attention and was very difficult for Stamos. “My first marriage was shattering to me. I was shattered for way too long, too,” he says in the interview with People, explaining that it all went downhill after their first year as husband and wife.

In fact, he admits that when he and Romijin broke up, he couldn’t stand her. Although he now admits that he may also have been to blame. “In my mind back then, she was the Devil, and I just hated her,” he admits. “I couldn’t believe how much I hated her, and it ruined my life. Looking back, and I talk about it [in the book], because it’s one of the steps in AA where the fourth step is you lay out all your grievances, everything that people did to you. I go like, ‘None.’”

In fact, the almost two decades of separation have made him see it from a different perspective. “You start thinking, it’s like, ‘Oh, she wasn’t the Devil. Maybe I was as much to blame as her.’” They were in the public spotlight and that made the situation difficult. “It was very much the opinion that she dumped me because her career was going great and mine wasn’t, and that’s humiliating,” he says. “I don’t blame her for it. It was just the perception that people took, and maybe they weren’t wrong. She was doing great at that time and I wasn’t.”

It was then, he says, that he started drinking too much. He did not know how to overcome it, he admits. At that time, his father also died. Drinking became an addiction. “I just went low. I didn’t go high. I just surrounded myself with people I shouldn’t have been with,” he admits. In 2015, he was arrested for drunk driving, a moment he described back then as “horrific.” He went into rehab and that was a game changer for him.

It wasn’t easy. He used medication such as antidepressants to sleep, but they made it difficult for him to memorize the scripts and remember essential information. So he decided to go slow and go through the whole process. “[It] was dark for a little bit.” But he notes “it started to get better” and later “made a lot of really good friends.”

His sisters and also the arrival of the series Fuller House, which began shortly after, helped him, as well as his wife and the arrival of his son. “It’s hard, but it’s not because it’s hard for a lot of people,” he explains. “It’s not that hard for me because it’s still so fresh in my mind [...] I was sitting on a curb or whatever. It just makes me throw up right now just thinking [about it],” he adds. “Never again.”

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