*If you didn’t see it, recently on “Oprah’s Master Class,” Tyler Perry opened up about why he still takes care of the man who physically and verbally abused him throughout he childhood, the man he thought was his father, Emmitt Perry Sr.
If you’re not familiar with Perry’s tale of childhood abuse, he spoke about it at length in a 2009 article where he revealed graphic details about the sexual, physical and emotional abuse he says he suffered as a child.
“I’m tired of holding this in,” Tyler Perry wrote on his website, “… so I’ve decided to give some away.”
Here’s more of the story from that 2009 CNN.com.
Perry recounts in a message posted on his website and in an e-mail to fans that a prescreening of the film “Precious,” due out later this year, dislodged “some raw emotions and brought me to some things and places in my life that I needed to deal with but had long forgotten. It brought back memories so strong that I can smell and taste them.”
Perry is an executive producer of the movie, which tells the tale of Claireece “Precious” Jones, an illiterate, obese 16-year-old girl from Harlem who is emotionally and physically abused.
The 40-year-old producer says he can identify with the character, and he recalls a number of incidents from his childhood.
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Emmitt Perry Sr., a construction worker, uttered profane insults at him and relentlessly beat and belittled him, Perry says. The random, violent beatings were commonplace until Perry was 19, he said.
“You … jackass! You got book sense but you ain’t got no … common sense,” he quotes his father as saying.
“I heard this every day of my childhood,” says Perry.
Attempts to reach Emmitt Perry Sr. for comment were unsuccessful.
Tyler Perry was born Emmitt Perry Jr. but changed his name to distance himself from his father.
One night when his mother was gone, Perry says, his drunken father “got the vacuum cleaner extension cord and trapped me in a room and beat me until the skin was coming off my back.”
Perry says that while at a playmate’s house when he was about 10 years old, his friend’s scantily clad mother locked the friend in the bathroom and told Perry to leave.
“I was at the front door trying to get out, when she came in and laid on the sofa and asked me if I wanted the key. I told her I had to go home as it was getting dark.
“She put the key inside of herself and told me to come get it, pulling me on top of her,” Perry writes on his site.
Whoa! Find out where this is going and MORE about Tyler Perry’s childhood abuse at CNN.
