Nate Parker Wants to Use His Platform to Raise Awareness For Sexual Violence

Nate Parker opened up about his resurfaced rape allegations while making an appearance on the Steve Harvey show on Wednesday (October 5).

The 36-year-old Birth of a Nation director expressed regret about the night he was accused of rape and how he wants to use this tragedy to raise awareness for sexual violence.

“Even outside of this tragic situation, I have so much empathy and even regret for that night. Man, you want to talk about erasing something? …Looking at myself [back then], the ideas of what I thought made a man aren’t the same as the ideas in my mind right now,” he explained.

Nate later added that hearing that his accuser had committed suicide “shocked my soul. To hear that news – I wasn’t prepared for it. I thought maybe she’d pop up once [the accusations] resurfaced. When this happened, and I spoke to it, it was insensitive. I caught a lot of flak for it, for being indignant and saying, ‘I’m innocent. I was falsely accused so that’s that!’ – not realizing that, one, there should be empathy for any woman. It was devastating to hear that I, at any point, had a connection with someone that felt like it was time for them to take their own life.”

Nate also expressed that he wishes to use this new platform for good, explaining, “We need to talk about something that is epidemic in America that no one’s talking about. If my film or if this moment has to be something that puts our eyes and the spotlight on it, then so be it – and that is sexual violence against women by men in this country. What I’ve learned in going through all this is there are so many survivors that you would never even know.”

Hear all that Nate had to say in the interview below…