VIDEO: Keke Palmer Opens Up About Being a Victim of Sexual Abuse

Keke Palmer is getting real with fans about her life growing up.

In a Facebook Live chat this week, the 23-year-old Scream Queens actress was asked about why chose to share her story in her upcoming book, I Don’t Belong to You: Quiet the Noise and Find Your Voice.

The question led Keke to open up about overcoming some tough beginnings in Robbins, Ill., with the help of her family’s strength and faith.

“I decided to write a book because I felt like so much of my life was similar to others,” Keke begins at the 11:45 mark. “So many people watch my career and sit back and think they can’t do the things I can do because they think I came from a privileged lifestyle. I’m trying to let y’all know immediately, I’ve been through some s–t. Some real sh–t, ya’ll. I didn’t come from glitter and glow.”

Watch below.

Pictured inside: Keke arriving for her flight out of LAX Airport on Thursday (December 29) in Los Angeles.

Click inside to see what else Keke had to say…

“It really was Godsent how everything happened for [me and my family],” she went on. “When we got [to California], the first couple of weeks, I got a Kmart commercial. People really thought I was born into this industry. They felt like it was handed to me. But that was the gag, and that’s the gag that my family, we all have. At the end of the day, it wasn’t handed to me. At the end of the day, the cards were against me. At the end of the day, I did grow up on Section 8. At the end of the day, I have experienced abuse, sexual abuse. I have experienced turmoil in my family. We have a strong bond but we’ve been through some sh–t.”

“The point is not to hide those things, because when we hide those things we stop other people from being able to envision that life for themselves,” Keke added. “Somebody may have gotten abused, somebody may have been put down, somebody mama wasn’t in their life, somebody daddy wasn’t in their life – whatever it could have been. If they don’t see that anybody else has gone through that, and people keep acting as though they live these perfect lives, then it really doesn’t allow other people to be inspired and motivated to go beyond their current realities. It leaves them in a position of thinking they’re not good enough or this life wasn’t offered to them to be good. The reality is it doesn’t matter where you’re from, it doesn’t matter who you are, it doesn’t matter what your daddy did to you or what your mama did to you, it matters what you do with yourself. And that is the reality.”