Keke Palmer Reflects On Molestation As A Child In New Book: “I Felt… Out Of Control And Overwhelmed”
Keke Palmer is known for her talent, charisma, and infectious energy, but in her new book Master of Me: The Secret to Controlling Your Narrative, the actress opens up about the struggles she has faced behind the scenes. From childhood trauma to the intense pressures of being a young star, Keke’s journey to self-empowerment has been anything but easy.
Growing up in a small town outside of Chicago, Keke, born Lauren Palmer, was the second-oldest of four children in a close-knit family. Her parents, Sharon, a teacher, and Larry, a Catholic deacon, worked hard to support their kids despite financial difficulties. “We were impoverished, but I felt so much love and a rich sense of community,” she shares in her interview with PEOPLE.
But despite the warmth of her family, the actress endured a painful trauma at the age of five. She was sexually abused by a peer, a disturbing experience she details in her new book. “People don’t really think about child-on-child molestation, but it’s something that exists. I felt weird and violated, but I didn’t really know how to place it. I just knew I had all these weird feelings and thoughts, and I felt a little bit out of control and overwhelmed,” she wrote.
As a child, Keke was drawn to performing, and her parents encouraged her to act. She landed her first role at 10 years old in Barbershop 2, but the impact of her early trauma wasn’t fully clear to her until she was 12. “I was reading a book about sexual abuse, and it said all these things about anxiety and hyper-sexualization. All of this stuff that I attributed to me but really it was because of what I had experienced.”
For Keke, understanding the trauma was more about making peace with herself than blaming others. “It wasn’t about blaming that other child. We don’t know sometimes what has happened to us, especially if it doesn’t look the way that the world has told you it looks like.”
By the time Keke was 15, she had landed her breakthrough role in True Jackson, VP on Nickelodeon, and life changed dramatically for her and her family, who moved to Los Angeles to support her rising career. However, the sudden fame was overwhelming. “Fame shocked us,” she admits, adding, “It was a shock that I could make that much money, that I could go to Universal Studios and have a hundred people surrounding me at once.”
Despite the outward success, Keke struggled internally with the pressures of fame. Becoming the family’s main provider as a teenager was an enormous responsibility. “I had a great time doing True Jackson VP, but it was also a very stressful, difficult, depressive time,” she reveals.
At that same time, Keke began a secret relationship with an older man. “I was 15, he was 20. I was trying to balance between being really young, but also feeling very mature. If I thought it was inappropriate, then I wouldn’t have done it.”
In hindsight, she understands that it wasn’t a healthy situation. As she wrote: “Obviously I shouldn’t have been 15 dating a 20-year-old, but in my mind it was like ‘I got a full-time job. . . . Can’t nobody understand me but a grown man.’ But he knew there was a lot of stuff that there’s no damn way for me to understand at damn 15.”
The five-year relationship, which she kept hidden from her family, was something Keke wasn’t emotionally equipped to handle. “I wasn’t mentally able to process and understand things that would’ve made that relationship appropriate,” she says.
Reflecting on her life now, the Reverse Psychology singer acknowledges that the challenges she faced shaped her, but she is determined to own her story and move forward. Her new book, Master of Me, is about taking control of her own narrative. “My diving into my stuff is less about you saying, ‘Me too,’ and more about you being like, ‘Let me dive into my stuff.’”
