Besides just being one of the most talked about movies of 2009, Precious has opened up the doors of abuse and has made a way for people to not be ashamed to speak out about it. We know the abuse that Halle has gone through personally, but now she has decided to speak on the abuse that she saw her mother and older sister go through as a child.
In the past, Halle Berry has refused to talk about the beatings meted out to her mother by her father, Jerome Jesse Berry, who left her family in Cleveland, Ohio, when she was four. But she has said a boyfriend once hit her so hard she is still largely deaf in her left ear.
Berry said she and her elder sister, Heidi, were still recovering from witnessing the violence inflicted on their mother, Judith, a retired nurse who was born in Liverpool.
“I saw my mother battered, and could not do anything to stop it,” she said. “My father was tyrannical, lashing out at her for no reason. I felt the effects that had on our family — I’ve experienced what these women have gone through.”
She said her mother was still working out why she took it for so many years. “That is a deep question, and I am not sure she will ever come up with one answer. I have one answer to anyone in a similar situation — get out.”
Berry never forgave her father, a hospital porter, even as he lay dying with Parkinson’s disease in 2003. He sold his account of their estrangement to a tabloid “for a pack of beer and cigarettes,” Berry said.
She wondered if her parents’ relationship had affected her past romances.
She said: “I never had to run to a shelter, but I did choose the wrong partners. Not always good men. Luckily, in recent years, I have been smart enough to hit the door when violence even becomes a possibility. That is something I will not tolerate.”
Hopefully, more people feel the need to share their story whether it be your neighbor or another celebrity. People that are in abusive situations need to know they are not alone and that they can get out because there is hope.
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