Rihanna Calls Assault ‘Humiliating’ And ‘Embarrassing’ On ‘Good Morning America’

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‘I even went back after he beat me, which was wrong,’ singer tells Diana Sawyer.
By Jocelyn Vena

Rihanna appears on “Good Morning America” on Thursday

Photo: ABC

Rihanna spoke candidly about being assaulted by Chris Brown in her first televised interview since the February incident. She said the assault was “humiliating” and “traumatizing,” and admitted that going back to Brown shortly after it happened was “wrong.”

“That’s embarrassing that that’s the type of person that I fell in love with,” Rihanna told Diane Sawyer in the interview that aired in part on “Good Morning America” on Thursday (November 5) and will air in full on “20/20″ Friday night. “[I was] so far in love, so unconditional that I went back. It’s humiliating to say this happened. To accept that? It’s a traumatizing experience.”

Rihanna told Sawyer that on February 8, Brown put her in a headlock twice and bit her ears and fingers. Soon after the incident, a police photo leaked, showing the singer to be badly bruised. But weeks later, she and Brown were spotted vacationing together in Miami.

“I stayed. I even went back after he beat me, which was wrong,” she admitted. “But again … I’m a human being, and people put me on a very unrealistic pedestal. And all these expectations, I’m not perfect. Also it’s pretty natural for that to be the first reaction. … It’s completely normal to go back. You start lying to yourself. The minute the physical wounds go away you want this thing to go away. This is a memory you don’t want to have ever again.”

Sawyer cited the statistic that it takes a woman an average of seven incidences to leave an abusive relationship. “Eight or nine, actually,” Rihanna said. “And I don’t want that to happen. That’s not what I want to teach people. … I didn’t cause this. I didn’t do it. This happened to me, and it can happen to anybody. A lot of women experience what I did, but not in the public, so it made it really difficult. I just felt like, ‘Here goes my little bit of privacy, exposed something that nobody wants anybody to know.’ So, here I am with the whole world knowing.”

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