Gabrielle Union is still reeling over the hacking of her nude photos.
The jaw-dropping, intimate photos of the Being Mary Jane star surfaced just three weeks after her wedding to Miami Heat star, Dwyane Wade.
Although the ordeal has been quite disheartening for the 42-year-old actress, she revealed her family made the difficult time much easier.
She recently shared an intimate account of the ordeal with Cosmopolitan.
Her essay, My Nude Photos Were Stolen, and I’m Fighting Back, chronicles the daunting experience and how she personally views photo hacking as a crime.
“A day after I got married this past August, rumors spread on the Internet that my name was on a list of more than 100 women whose private photos had been stolen off Apple’s iCloud,” she wrote.
Celebrities including Jennifer Lawrence, Kirsten Dunst and Kate Upton among the women who were victimized. Although she had learned of the hacking scandal, her photos didn’t surface online until three weeks later.
She went on to recount how she found out about the photos. Needless to say, she was devastated.
“We were taking a ‘family-moon’ with the kids in Turks and Caicos – I’m on this island paradise with my family and I had hoped they had apprehended these criminals, but they hadn’t,” Union said.
“In the moment, I froze. I was mortified, terrified. … I just didn’t know what to do. I felt I had given so much of myself, but I had saved a little bit for myself and for my husband, and they had taken that from me.”
Although the incident was quite embarrassing and disconcerting, she revealed her family has definitely been supportive during this difficult time.
She expressed her gratitude for her family. She also revealed she was relieved by her mother’s response. “Honey, we’ve been through so much worse, and we’re fine,” her mother said.
While some people feel it’s careless to even take nude photos, the Deliver Us From Eva actress refuses to be blamed when she is the one who has been victimized.
Union added, “I didn’t do anything wrong – no matter what people describe to me, ‘It’s your fault, you’re stupid to take nude photos, that’s what happens when you’re a celebrity’ – all this nonsense. … They’re criminals.
“What you do with your own body is your choice. Period. There’s no gray matter there,” she said. “And when someone takes your choice away and your power away over your own body, it’s a crime. Period. A hacking scandal? We’re lessening it, making it more palatable for mass consumption, but it’s a crime.”
Gabrielle Union‘s full essay, My Nude Photos Were Stolen, and I’m Fighting Back, will be featured in the December 2014 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine.