Broadcast journalist Connie Chung said on Wednesday that she had been a victim of sexual assault at the hands of a family doctor roughly 50 years ago.
Chung said that the incident occurred during the 1960s when she visited the doctor at his home to receive an IUD. Chung said that the physician — the same one who delivered her as a child in 1942 — used the opportunity to sexually assault her.
“While I stared at the ceiling, his right index finger massaged my clitoris. With his right middle finger inserted in my vagina, he moved both fingers rhythmically,” Chung wrote in the Washington Post. “He coached me verbally in a soft voice, ‘Just breathe. ‘Ah-ah,’ mimicking the sound of soft breathing. ‘You’re doing fine,’ he assured me.”
“Suddenly, to my shock, I had an orgasm for the first time in my life,” she continued. “My body jerked several times. Then he leaned over, kissed me, a peck on my lips, and slipped behind the curtain to his office area.”
Chung wrote that she did not tell her parents or the police.
“It never crossed my mind to protect other women. Please understand, I was actually embarrassed about my sexual naiveté,” she wrote. “All I wanted to do was bury the incident in my mind and protect my family.”
The revelation from Chung was similar to a column published in USA Today by CNN contributor Kirsten Powers. Like Chung, Powers said she was sexually assaulted when she was a teen at a party. She said she did not come forward with the accusation for a number of similar reasons.
“While I knew something terrible had happened, I didn’t think I had been sexually assaulted,” wrote Powers. “In the early 1980s, we didn’t possess the vocabulary to make such declarations. I thought I had done something stupid and paid a price for it. I thought it was my fault.”