Photo Credit: Oscar De La Hoya/Instagram
Oscar De La Hoya opened up to the L.A. Times about being raped as a child, his first time ever speaking about it. It occurred at a boxing tournament in Hawaii with a woman over 35. “I was raped at 13, from a woman, an older woman,” ODLH told the L.A. Times. “13, lost my virginity over being, you know, being raped, basically.”
“You suppress everything,” he added. “You’re living this life, the ‘Golden Boy,’ but, oh s***, wait, that’s still there. Like, I never thought about it, I never processed it, I never really thought how my feelings are … until one day it just comes out, and you don’t know how to deal with it.”
ODLH says he’s been working on his health because he felt he was “going to throw my life away.” And he’s referring to his past alcohol and drug addiction. At the time he just pulled out of a boxing match he had scheduled for September 11th against Vitor Belfort in what would have been his return to the ring after 13 years away due to a recent COVID diagnosis.
“I mean, what are the chances of me getting Covid? I’ve been taking care of myself and this really, really kicked my a–,” the fighter said in a video from his hospital bed Friday.
As for the woman that raped him, ironically he himself has had his own accusations of the same from a settlement he came to with a woman when he was accused of raping a 15 year old in 1996 when he was 23 and another woman that claims he raped her in 1999 which he denies. He was sued in 2019 for sexual assault which he says is “completely false.
It isn’t clear why he chose to speak about being raped as a child now but after being diagnosed with COVID, something scores of people have been dying of, it’s understandable that he would be reflective now.
