Evan Rachel Wood tweets full statement on rape following 'Rolling Stone' interview

Impact

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, actress Evan Rachel Wood said that she'd been subject to "physical, psychological and sexual" abuse. In a follow-up email, excerpted in the article, the Westworld star clarified that she'd been raped — twice. After her statement went viral, she tweeted the whole thing on Monday evening. 

"Yes," she wrote. "I've been raped. By a significant other while we were together. And on a separate occasion, by the owner of a bar."

Wood discussed her reasons for remaining silent so long — not wanting to "make it a sob story," not wanting "to be accused of doing it for attention, or told it wasn't a big deal, or, 'That's not really rape.'" According to RAINN, an estimated two-thirds of sexual assaults go unreported as many survivors want to avoid the victim-blaming, public doubting and emotional upheaval that comes with reporting sexual violence. 

But Wood, 29, said now is not the time to keep quiet. As she mentioned to Rolling Stone in her interview, she addressed the problem of "locker-room talk," saying she had "a very, very visceral reaction" to predatory behavior being written off or ignored, presumably during the presidential election

"I don't believe we live in a time where people can stay silent any longer," she wrote in her tweet. "I certainly can't. Not given the state our world is in with its blatant bigotry and sexism. It should be talked about because it's swept under the rug as nothing, and I will not accept this as 'normal.'"

Chris Pizzello/AP

On Westworld, the HBO series that has launched her back into the spotlight, Wood plays a robot named Dolores who is raped repeatedly, but Wood said she sees the show not as an affirmation of rape culture, but rather, "a commentary on that."

"I mean, your demons never fully leave," she told Rolling Stone. "But when you're using them to create something else, it almost gives them a purpose and feels like none of it was in vain. I think that's how I make peace with it. Westworld? Good God. I left so much in that first season and never looked back."

She echoed that sentiment in her tweeted statement, emphasizing that survivors are allowed to hurt.

"I am still standing," she wrote. "I am alive. I am happy. I am strong. But I am still not okay. I think it's important for people to know that, for survivors to own that, and that pressure to get over it already, should be lifted."