Jeannie Mai Recalls Sex Assault By Male Family Member At Age 9: 'This Happened Every Day'
Jeannie Mai is recalling a horrific time in her life, when at age nine, she was sexually assaulted by a male family member.
In a new episode of her KIN Network webseries, Hello Hunnay, Mai, 40, revealed it was her 16-year-old relative who babysat her as a child, who committed the abuse.
"I just remember one day this person sitting very close to me, we were playing video games, and he started to touch my thigh," Mai said, adding that she was just 9-years-old at the time an didn’t know what to do.
As the days, and weeks, and months went by, the man’s sexual conduct escalated. At one point, he allegedly began taking off her clothes, exposing himself to her and forcing her to touch him.
“This happened every day,” said Mai, adding that it went on for about one year.
Once she wrapped her head around the scandal, Mai detailed the abuse to her mother, Olivia, but she didn’t believe her.
When she asked for another babysitter, Olivia assumed Mai and her cousin were just fighting like kids, and when she told her he undressed her, she was “confused” and chose to believe him over her.
"I began to get angry because now I'm telling my mom that he's taking off my clothes, and you said, 'I don't believe you,'" Mai told her mom in the video. "In that moment, I was about 15. I remember distinctly those words, 'I don't believe you. He wouldn't do that. That's your cousin. This is in your head.' I felt by myself. I even got to a point where I started to ask myself, 'Did I imagine these things?'"
Due to this, Mai’s relationship with her mom disintegrated.
At 16, Mai ran away and moved to San Francisco. She didn't speak to Olivia for eight years, until they reconnected when she was 24.
Despite how she reacted in front of Mai, Olivia says she felt "so bad" and "guilty" when Mai brought up the situation again years later.
At that point, she went to the relative’s home to confront him and threatened to call the police for what he did to Mai.
"I want to come over to his house and punch him and I want to put him in jail," Olivia said. "I'm really sorry. I don't know what happened. I don't know why I loved that boy."
"I wish you told me that you went to his house. You never told me," Mai said in the clip, holding back tears. "That right there is all I needed to know, that you believed me and you listened and that you would go and try and do something about it. I just needed your support. I feel like you just set something free inside of me because you believed me."
RadarOnline.com readers know Mai first revealed news of the sexual abuse in September, one month before her estranged husband welcomed a child with his new girlfriend.