Sally Field: Teen Empowered by Sexually Abusive Yet Magical Step-Father

Sally Field: Approximately 12-Years-Old

Sally Field shared in her memoir, In Pieces, that her stepfather sexually abused her until she turned 14. 

Interestingly, Field shared that her step-father "could be magical" and that when he summoned her to his bedroom that made her feel "Power. This was power." 

Here's an excerpt from Dave Itzkoff's New York Times review of the memoir:

After Margaret Field filed for divorce from Sally’s father, Richard, in 1951, she got remarried in 1952 to Jock Mahoney, a stuntman and actor (“Tarzan Goes to India”) known by the nickname Jocko.

As Sally Field writes of Mr. Mahoney in her memoir, “It would have been so much easier if I’d only felt one thing, if Jocko had been nothing but cruel and frightening. But he wasn’t. He could be magical, the Pied Piper with our family as his entranced followers.”

He also frequently summoned Ms. Field to his bedroom alone. “I knew,” Ms. Field writes. “I felt both a child, helpless, and not a child. Powerful. This was power. And I owned it. But I wanted to be a child — and yet.” Ms. Field said her stepfather’s abuse of her stopped after she turned 14. Her mother divorced Mr. Mahoney in 1968, and he died in 1989.

Jock Mahoney, Sally's stepfather, with Sally's Mother (1955)