Ellen DeGeneres' stepsister accuses her of making up stepfather's sexual assault allegations to 'sell a TV show'
Ellen DeGeneres' stepsister has slammed the talk show host for making allegations against her stepfather, saying she doesn't buy Ellen's shocking claim that she was groped by her father as a child. Ellen had claimed that she was groped by Roy Grussendorf on multiple occasions while she was a mere teenager.
In an interview with Daily Mail, Grussendorf's biological daughter, Rori Rhodes, accused Ellen of only making the "pathetic" allegation to "sell a TV show". The furious step-sibling branded the disturbing allegations "selfishly motivated", and claimed Ellen "can't prove" her allegations.
Rori's allegations against Ellen come after the talk show host told David Letterman in his new Netflix series, 'My Next Guest Needs No Introduction', that when she was a teenager, Grussendorf used her mother's breast cancer diagnosis as an excuse to grope Ellen's breasts on multiple occasions.
Rori told the outlet, "I don't know if it's true. I don't know if Daddy did that. But it's like, really? It's so sad that she's doing that. It's pathetic. The man has been dead forever. Why do they all think they have to bring up something horrible from their childhood? She can't prove that, my dad's not alive to prove it, and it's just not necessary."
She continued, "I don't know what happened, I would probably bet a lot of money that Daddy didn't do that. He might have been concerned about [Ellen's mother] Betty's breasts, and her breasts were turning black which they do, and wanting to know about that."
Rori concluded her point, explaining: "But the bottom line is I wouldn't trust anything Ellen would say, ever. It's always been about Ellen. She doesn't care about anybody else, it's all about what she needs to do." Ellen first described the alleged sexual assault in a magazine interview in 2005, when she claimed Grussendorf once tried to break her door down, forcing her to escape the house out of a window.
"He tries to break my door down, and I kicked the window out and ran 'cause I knew it was going to go more to something," Ellen recounted. "And I didn't want to tell my mother because I was protecting her and I knew that would ruin her happiness. I'm angry at myself because, you know, I didn't, I was too weak to stand up to [him], I was 15 or 16."
Ellen continued, "It's a really horrible, horrible story and the only reason I'm actually going to go into detail about it is because I want other girls to not ever let someone do that." Rori, a 70-year-old interior designer from Dallas, Texas, and one of Grussendorf's three children from a previous marriage was livid about the allegations.
Rori further claimed that Ellen was only repeating the claims for publicity. "For her to bring up trash like this like she is now, I don't understand that. To sell a book? To sell a TV show? It's a bunch of bullsh*t. I mean really? What is the purpose of doing all of this?" she said.
"Are we talking about money here? Ellen has enough money, she doesn't have to do this," she added. Rori also claimed in the interview that Ellen had never spoken about the story to her step-family before it was revealed in the media, and claimed the talk show star was only out for herself.
"She doesn't care. She's never reached out to us, she's never done anything," she said. "My brothers are so angry they don't even want to talk about it. I guess this horrible situation that happened in her childhood didn't affect the fact that she's a superstar," she added, sardonically.
Rori said that her father and Ellen clashed over his homophobia and old-fashioned views of women's domestic roles. "He didn't hate her, but he didn't respect her in any way because she was gone all night long, she didn't take care of the house, she was hell-bent on being a comedian," she said.