In her iconic role as Captain Olivia Benson in the long-running TV series, "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit," actress Mariska Hargitay fights to bring justice to women who are the victims of sexual assault. This work has, through the years, been taken up off-screen, having founded the Joyful Heart Foundation, which provides support to people who have found themselves in similar situations depicted on her show and, as she reveals in a moving new essay written for People Magazine, in her own life.
Under the title "A Rape. A Reckoning. A Renewal," Hargitay is candid about a rape she experienced in her thirties by a man whom she'd believed to be a friend, writing:
