Sexual abuse is devastating at any age, but for Sheila E. it was difficult to comprehend because she was raped when she was just 5 years old by her babysitter.
“I was raped at the age of five by a babysitter. That was devastating for me,” said Sheila E. to Latina. To make matters worse, she was molested a couple of years later, when she was still a young girl. “I didn’t want to be who I was. I wanted to change,” she adds.
The musician from New Power Generation is the daughter of percussionist Pete Escovedo, her godfather was the late Tito Puente, and dated the late Prince.
In 1991 she suffered a collapsed lung, which caused her legs to give out and become semi-paralyzed, something that crushed her physically and emotionally because she was the beautiful high-energy drummer rocking out in high heels.
She started going to church and her outlook on life began to change. “All of these things I’ve carried, being ashamed and feeling guilty, all of these things that are not of God. I just cried and said ‘thank you for my life and what I have.'” She knew that she was here for a reason and felt her life beginning to change for the best.
Being in a rock band she was always working alongside men, who often sexualized and intimidated her for being a woman. “They would degrade me and say, ‘you’re only here because of blah, blah, you’re not really that good. But I can do something for you if you do something for me.’ And what I did was say, ‘No, I’m not going to do that and be that person. I’m not going to have sex with anyone.'”
“I just felt dirty to be approached in that way. It made me feel like you’re not good at what you do. But, because of my parents, them bringing me up saying ‘you be the woman that you are, be strong and do the right thing,’ I said. ‘I am doing well and I don’t have to prove anything to you.'”