In my new memoir, Love, Pamela, and accompanying Netflix documentary, Pamela, a Love Story, get to set the record straight on my life, rise to fame and sex tape scandal that almost destroyed me. 

I also reveal my sad history of sexual assault, from being molested as a child by my female babysitter to being gang-raped in high school by my boyfriend and six of his friends. 

Despite my traumatic past, I am "not necessarily looking for sympathy," I just wanted to regain authorship of my own life. 

I don't feel like a victim anymore. There's things that happen in people's lives, and you have to get over them because they accumulate, you know? Something happens to you, then another thing happens, and it kind of compounds. So, it's great to be able to go back and feel those feelings. 

After the abuse I suffered in my early years, I experienced paralyzing shyness, shame and a lack of control. With the times where I felt abused, you know, taken advantage of when I was a young teenager … I felt really shut down, and that was, I think, what the shyness was. I felt really confused. I work a lot with the National Domestic Violence Hotline — my foundation supports them — and we talk a lot about abuse and how it's something that's taken away from you. 

The first time I posed for Playboy, I was shaking from nervousness, but it flipped a switch inside of me. I think that that's where I kind of took my power back. I felt empowered by it. I felt like a woman. I felt like I had claimed my sensuality, my sexuality — that this was my body, and I was in control.

After my Playboy debut, everything changed for me. I made my first appearance in Married… with Children in the fall of 1990, Home Improvement in 1991 and Baywatch in 1992. A few years later, I married Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee.

All I ever wanted was a family and kids, and to look after somebody, and to have that kind of heightened sense of romance.

In 1995, a tape of our newlywed couple's intimate moments we recorded privately during our honeymoon was stolen from our home and leaked on the internet. 

It was never a tape made for distribution or a sex tape. It was home movies we spliced together because Tommy and I were naked all the time. I mean, we were just crazy — two people in love.… Maybe there was one tiny little part that was more sexual, but it was more spliced together to look like we made something. I still haven't seen it, so I'm not quite sure what it is. 

Taking private photos or videos of your spouse was very much a part of many marriages much to many spouses regrets once their unions were dissolved. In most cases their spicy media was quickly removed from where it might be discovered later or destroyed so it could never be viewed by anyone again. For most of us we could quickly dismiss it as being adventuresome in our relationship. 

Unlike ours which became the first real viral video. Having ours stolen and made public was hard enough. Having it made public without my consent nearly ended me. The lawyers basically said, “you’re in Playboy, you have no right to privacy. I consented to my photos in Playboy…I never consented to having anyone except myself and my partner seeing the videos. 

Then a series called Pam & Tommy dramatized my turbulent three-year marriage to Lee came under fire for re-exploiting her, as it was made without my involvement or permission. 

I never had anything to do with it, and neither did Tommy. It felt silly and superficial and shallow and rude. I always get concerned for my kids, you know. We've all gone through a lot together and we get through things as they come. And we've always been very open and honest about all the things in our life, but I didn't really want that to come out.