This from Friday's (March 10th) PageSix:
March 10, 2006 -- WAS George Clooney's caddish behavior the reason Teri Hatcher went public with her shocking sex-abuse revelations?
The Vanity Fair cover story on the "Desperate Housewives" diva says Hatcher's jaw-dropping disclosure to the magazine - that she was sexually molested by her uncle as a child - was triggered by a recent romantic debacle with a Hollywood hunk referred to in the article only as "Mystery Man."
Four years ago, after learning that a teenager with a similar complaint against her uncle had killed herself, Hatcher feared he would escape prosecution and went to cops with her story. That prompted him to plead guilty. But Hatcher never had to testify in court, and her abuse remained secret until she revealed it to Vanity Fair.
The magazine reports the unidentified star who bedded and dumped Hatcher left her so emotionally shattered that she could no longer keep from talking about her evil uncle.
"Mystery Man" was none other than Clooney, a well-placed source tells Page Six. He dated Hatcher briefly beginning in January, when we first reported they'd gotten cozy, but he dropped her soon after.
"The debacle with Mystery Man . . . made the parallels between her romantic failures and the legacy of her sexual abuse seem too obvious to ignore," Vanity Fair's Leslie Bennetts writes.
Clooney's rep, Stan Rosenfeld, says, "I doubt Teri Hatcher is your source, and unless she is, you're full of [bleep]. I doubt very seriously that your source is credible." As for Clooney and Hatcher's relationship, "I don't ask George about his private life," Rosenfeld sniffs.
Bennetts wrote: "After an elaborate courtship, Hatcher opened her heart to a handsome guy who convinced her that she was entering a magical new relationship, only to have him disappear as soon as she'd let down her guard. He charmed, he conquered, he said, 'I'll call you,' and - poof - he was gone."
Being "seduced and abandoned by a world-class Don Juan" left Hatcher "emotionally flayed, stripped of every protective covering until she [was] nothing but exposed nerve endings," Bennetts writes.
"She is so emotionally bereft, so overwhelmed with grief, that it can hurt just trying to watch her cope with it."
"I have so much pain," Hatcher told VF. "I'm a woman who carries around all these layers of fear and vulnerability . . . Oh, my God, can you believe what a mess I am?"
