Mo'Nique has banished her brother from her life - because he refuses to acknowledge her allegations that he sexually abused her as a child.
The actress/comedienne claims her older brother inspired the monstrous Mary Jones in Precious - the role that earned her Oscar gold on Sunday night (07Mar10).
In a candid TV interview taped before the Academy Awards, Mo'Nique told U.S. broadcaster Barbara Walters her sibling sexually abused her from the age of seven.
She said, "Sexual abuse can be someone touching your breasts, someone rubbing your vagina, someone rubbing your behind, someone rubbing up against you with their private parts."
Mo'Nique, 42, told Walters she was too afraid to tell her parents of her brother's actions, and didn't reveal all until she was 15.
Her folks immediately asked her brother to leave the house and he has been largely estranged from his sister ever since - but she let him back into her life when her twins were born in 2005.
Mo'Nique admitted she has had an apology of sorts from her brother, who was jailed for sexually abusing another woman.
She explained, "(He said) if you think I did something wrong then I'm sorry."
But she has had nothing to do with her brother since her twins were born: "He held one of the twins and at that moment I had a conversation with my brother, and we have not spoken since then."
However, playing Mary Jones in Precious, Mo'Nique admits she can at least understand her brother's "sickness".
She added, "It made me stop resenting my brother because I understood mental illness, I understood the disease."
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