Anika Noni Rose has claimed she was once sexually assaulted by a stranger on a plane.
The ‘Dreamgirls’ star said she was left "shaken" and "angry" after the incident which happened last year.
Speaking about the #MeToo campaign SiriusXM’s Make It Plain show, Anika revealed: "I have never spoken of this, but I will say this out loud now: I was assaulted on a plane last year. And I haven’t been able to get this person’s name; they won’t give me the name of the person."
The 45-year-old actress – who voiced the character Tiana in Disney animation ‘The Princess and the Frog’ and now stars in US TV drama ‘The Quad’ – revealed she was asleep on the plane at the time and when she told the cabin crew what was happening the flight was diverted and her assailant removed from the aircraft.
Anika explained: "We turned that plane around. I was offered that option in the beginning, and I said no, because it seemed like the person was then going to go to sleep. I felt like, ‘Maybe he’s chilling.’"
But the ‘Assassination Nation’ actress said the incident continued to escalate.
Anika said: "I was like, ‘I don’t know what to do with myself. Yes, please turn the plane around.’ I was shaking. I was so upset and so hurt and angry. Like, angry. I wanted to punch that man, and I knew that that would take away from the story that I had to tell. I had to hold in everything that I was feeling to be able to tell this story and be heard and taken seriously from the place I was in."
Anika has warned women to be vigilant against such forms of unexpected violation.
She said: "I was a woman asleep on a plane. I wasn’t dressed up. I wasn’t fancy. I actually looked like I was probably in school, and somebody felt free to touch me in that moment. You don’t have to be in Hollywood. You don’t have to be dressed up. You don’t have to be a siren. I was on a plane, in a skullcap, looking like a kid, basically, and this person felt free to touch me. It is mind-blowing.
"It sounds like a very small thing. You know, it’s not. It is the police definition of rape. It is not the definition of rape that we think of, because we think of rape as intercourse. Rape is really beyond intercourse, when we look at what the definition is.
"It doesn’t make it less of a violation. It’s a different type of violation, but it doesn’t make it less shocking."
Anika reported the assault to the FBI imediatey but they ultimately dropped the case.
Anika said: "I don’t really know how you deal with that. It was such a sly violence, such a sly violation. It’s a really tough thing to deal with when something happens to you, and you do everything you’re supposed to do, and somebody somewhere else decides, ‘Well, we’re not going to go forward with this.’
Anika did take a photograph of her attacker on her phone and she still has the image saved, vowing, "I’m not finished. I’m not finished."
Anika Noni Rose claims she was assaulted on a plane
