Vanessa Williams says she was molested at age 10

Vanessa Williams has opened up about her traumatic past and revealed that she was sexually molested as a child by a family friend. 

The admission, excerpted in this week’s People magazine, comes in the 49-year-old actress’ upcoming memoir, “You Don’t Know.”

The Desperate Housewives star said the fateful night that shaped much of her life afterwards occurred during a trip to visit family friends in California.

The family’s 18-year-old daughter snuck into the room Williams was sleeping in and allegedly pulled down the bloomers of her baby-doll pajamas.

“‘What are you doing?’ I asked,” the New York Daily News quoted her as writing of the encounter.

“‘Don’t worry—it’ll feel good.’ I lay there paralysed. What was going on? I didn’t speak. She kept at (the molestation) for I don’t know how long. She slid my bloomers back up and whispered: ‘Don’t tell anyone’,” she wrote.

Williams, a former Miss America, didn’t tell anyone about the incident for many years.

“For years I kept Susan’s visit to myself, I didn’t really understand until college.

“I was with my boyfriend and it hit me and I blurted out: ‘Oh my God - I was molested’.

“After that trip I felt something change in me.

“I had always been defiant, but I became a bit more rebellious. I began to pull away from my parents’,” she wrote.

Despite the horrific experience, Williams told People that she has since moved on.

“It didn’t paralyse me. And I don’t dwell,” she said.