*Actress-turned-Fox News pundit Stacey Dash is opening up about her violent and troubled past in a new book titled, “There Goes My Social Life.”
Dash 49, says she was four years old, living in South Bronx, when she was molested for the first time by a 16-year-old family acquaintance. At 16, she snorted her first line of cocaine, and it quickly became a habit.
“I couldn’t find happiness,” Dash tells People.com. “It got to a point where I didn’t even want to live anymore. The voice in my head was saying, ‘There’s nothing here for you.'”
She appears to connect her infamous call for the removal of Black History Month and BET to being raised in a culture of drugs and violence. She says people raised in these environments rely on social welfare programs. And…”When you get stuff for free, you have no self-worth. When you have no self-worth, you become depressed, addicted and either abused or an abuser. This is what perpetuates the cycle of violence in inner cities. We don’t need free stuff. We need opportunities.”
“When I say there should not be a BET channel or a Black History Month, I’m saying we deserve more,” says Dash. “I just hope people understand that I’m not judging; I’m coming from experience.”
Dash says she was still doing drugs by her early 20s and began dating a man who ended up physically abusing her.
“He would punch me in my body, my legs, my chest, anything that could be covered,” says Dash. “But part of me felt like I deserved it because what I was coming from was no better. I didn’t have an identity. That’s why I fight for women and people in the inner cities today. I want them to know it will get better.”
Dash ended things with her abuser and had just begun dating singer Christopher Williams when she learned she was pregnant with Williams’ child.
Reveals Dash: “When I got pregnant, I was doing a lot of drugs and I didn’t want to live. I wanted to die. I was going to have an abortion. I was crying and I said to God, ‘Please tell me what to do.’ And God told me, ‘Keep your son.’ I ripped the IV out of my arm and I said, ‘I’m keeping my son.'”
And as a mother to Austin, now 25, and daughter Lola, 12, Dash says she’ll be honest with children about her past.
“The best way to protect my children is to be honest with them,” says Dash. “I let them know that I survived. I’m not a victim. And there is nothing they can’t overcome.”
The book title comes from Dash’s line in “Clueless”:
