Ellen DeGeneres opened up about her own experiences with sexual assault in a new interview with David Letterman.

In the interview, as reported by US Weekly in an unreleased clip, she talked about being sexually assaulted by her stepfather when she was a teenager.

“She remarried a very bad man, a very bad man,” she recalled of her mother, Betty DeGeneres. “My mother had breast cancer right after they got married so she had her breast removed and they had a very sexual relationship, which was also very uncomfortable for me. And he told me when she was out of town that he felt a lump in her breast and needed to feel my breast and didn’t want to upset her but needed to feel mine.”

She continued: “Then he tries to do it again another time and then another time, he tries to break my door down and I kick my window out and ran because I knew it was going [to turn into] something. I didn’t want to tell my mother because I was protecting her and I knew that it would ruin her happiness and she was happy with him even though he was a horrible man.”

Ultimately, Ellen realized, “I should never have protected her and I should have protected myself. I didn’t tell her for a few years and then I told her and then she didn’t believe me and then she stayed with him for 18 more years, and finally left him because he changed the story so many times.”

My Next Guest Needs No Introduction With David Letterman season 2 premieres on Netflix Friday, May 31.

H/T: Us Weekly.