Melissa Benoist, the star of “Supergirl,” said in a 14-minute Instagram video on Wednesday that she had experienced domestic abuse.
The “Glee” alum continued by explaining how she had entered a relationship with a man who repeatedly mistreated her, first mentally and emotionally, then violently.
She said that the abuse had not always been violent. It initially appeared to me as an usual malfunction stemming from his insecurities and sadness.
The 31-year-old Benoist continued by describing how her attacker would become envious if she was around other guys, even going so far as to alter her attire before they went out and being furious if she had to film love sequences.
The topic of work in general was sensitive, according to Benoist. He forbade me from ever kissing or even engaging in flirting behaviour with males, which was very difficult for me to do. As a result, I started declining invitations to auditions, job offers, test deals, and friendships so as not to offend him.
She claimed that after five months of dating, he tossed a smoothie in her direction. She said she didn’t realise she had just been mistreated as she hurried to clean up the mess before it destroyed the couch. Benoist claimed that even as the violence increased, she kept quiet.
She remarked, “The recollections feel like they happened on an other planet where I was breathing different air and experiencing a horrific secret I could never tell anyone I had ever seen. “The harsh reality is that I learned what it felt like to be pinned down and slapped repeatedly, punched so hard the wind knocked me out, dragged by my hair across concrete, headbutted, pinched till my skin burst, driven into a wall so hard the plaster crumbled, and choked.”
Benoist did not identify the alleged abuser in the video, but one of the stories she related was strikingly similar to one she had shared on “The Tonight Show” in March 2016, when she was still wed to her former “Glee” co-star Blake Jenner.
She described a moment when her spouse threw his iPhone at her face, shredding her iris, almost rupturing her eyeball, and breaking her nose in the Instagram video posted on Wednesday. She claimed she had a swollen left eye, a full lip, and was due back on camera the following morning for reshoots for the movie she was starring in.
“We made up a flimsy story together,” Benoist said in her video. “I had tripped and fallen on the stairs of our deck, and hit my face on a potted plant.”
She claimed that she continued to tell lies to the police in order to defend her partner, but something had changed.
“This is a wound that will never be better. My vision will never be the same,” she remarked in the video on Wednesday. “After that, I was done emotionally.”
After then, according to Benoist, a friend came to see her at work and asked her bluntly whether she had experienced domestic abuse. Benoist responded in the affirmative and started the drawn-out process of leaving and recovering.
According to Benoist in the video, none of this is scandalous news. It was my world. It helped me understand what love is and isn’t as well as my own strength.
She claimed that the reason she decided to speak out was to encourage other women who had experienced intimate relationship violence.
She stated on Wednesday, “If you are going through what I did and you see this, maybe you will find this tiny straw that will break the camel’s back.” “At the very least, you might start to consider your independence. In that case, I’m here to support you and tell you that you can and should live a life free of violence.