Media mogul Tyler Perry didn’t have a picture perfect childhood, and he’s opening up about it unlike ever before in a cover story with People magazine.

With an empire worth more than $1 billion, no one would ever know that Tyler had to overcome an upbringing tattered by abuse, trauma and depression.

However, through it all, he was able to forgive his father: “Holding on was hurting me more than him,” he said.

“I don’t think I ever felt safe or protected as a child,” he told People. His late mother, Maxine, was married to Emmitt Perry, an abusive alcoholic who once beat Tyler so badly with a vacuum cord that it ripped the skin off his back.

By the time he was 10 years old, Tyler was a victim of sexual assault by three different men and a woman, all of whom were family friends.

“It was rape,” he recalled. “I didn’t know what was going on or the far-reaching effects of it. I just moved through it.” At the time, he added, he believed “Boys don’t cry, shut up and move on.”

Later in life, Tyler found out that Emmitt was not his biological father — something he’d been told growing up. Forgiving him of all of the trauma took time.

“[It took] a tremendous amount of prayer,” he said. “But the biggest thing that helped me understand it is that me holding on to what I was holding on to wasn’t hurting him…but it was killing me.”

Read more about Tyler’s emotional journey at People.