Desperate Housewives star Teri Hatcher had helped put in prison his uncle who had commit various sexual offenses in 2006. This former uncle of her has died of colon cancer at 70, six years after being sentenced to 14 years behind bars for molesting two young girls, one of whom committed suicide, reports the San Jose Mercury News.
Teri Hatcher chose to be quiet on this issue.
In 2006, the Desperate Housewives star went public with the revelation that Richard Hayes Stone – the then-husband of her mother's sister – molested her in the late 1960s and early '70s, when she was no more than 7.
Hatcher said that she kept the abuse a secret from everyone, including her parents. She last saw Stone when she was 8 or 9 years old.
"That's a victim thing; you ask yourself, 'Am I just crazy? Did I make all this up?' Somehow it might be easier to accept that you're crazy and made it all up than to admit that it happened, and how awful it was," Hatcher, now 43, told Vanity Fair in 2006.
Like others, Hatcher had read newspaper accounts in 2002 about northern California teen Sarah Van Cleemput, who before shooting herself left behind a note saying, "You're probably thinking a normal teenager doesn't do this; well, ask Dick!"
Prosecutors linked "Dick" in the note to Stone, a former engineer at National Semiconductor and a close friend of Sarah Van Cleemput's family.
