Rosie O'Donnell Reveals What Her Father Did

Rosie O'Donnell has talked about her "alcoholic, abusive" father before, but she never mentioned sexual abuse—until now, the New York Post reports. "It started very young," the 56-year-old talk show host tells Variety New York bureau chief Ramin Setoodeh. "And then when my mother died, it sort of ended in a weird way, because then he was with these five children to take care of. ... Any child who is put in that position, especially by someone in the family, you feel completely powerless and stuck, because the person you would tell is the person doing it."

O'Donnell told Piers Morgan in 2012 that her father Edward Joseph O'Donnell, who died of cancer in 2015, did "some unforgivable things" but added, "as a child, I think, the statute of limitations has to wear off. You get to be 50 years old, you can't still be angry at what your father did in 1970. ... I have forgiven him." O'Donnell's story will appear in Setoodeh's upcoming book, Ladies Who Punch: The Explosive Inside Story of "The View," due out April 2. (Rosie reveals why Trump has gone "crazy" on her.)