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Pamela Anderson does not often publicly discuss her sex tape with Tommy Lee, which was stolen from their home and publicly leaked in 1995. However, in her new memoir, Love, Pamela, she devotes a portion of the book to reliving that difficult time in her life, which she said still haunts her to this day. “We never made a ‘sex tape’,” Pamela insists. “We just filmed each other, always, and lived a sexy passionate life. Sweet newlyweds, just two crazy, naked people in love.”
The sex tape went public after Pam and Tommy’s safe was stolen from their house by Rand Gauthier, who was part of the construction crew doing work on the home. Pamela recalls being contacted by Penthouse about the tape and being offered $5 million for the rights to the footage. “We were in shock,” Pamela admits. “We had no memory of filming anything so crazy.” When Pam and Tommy, who were newly married at the time, turned down the offer, the tape was leaked anyway.
“A VHS came to us wrapped in brown paper,” Pam reveals. “Too late. I didn’t watch it. I have not watched it to this day.” Tommy did watch the tape, though, according to Pam’s recollection. When he explained what the footage was of, Pamela recalls being in disbelief. “I felt strange, liquid, melting, leaving my body once again,” she writes. However, she was pregnant at the time, with a young baby at home, and knew she had to “find a way through” the situation for her kids.
Pam and Tommy tried to block the company that had distributed the tape, and Pam had to give her deposition at seven months pregnant. “My heart sank when I saw there were naked photos of me blown up and placed behind the lawyers seated across the table,” she says. “Such a cruel tactic, apparently done to prove I didn’t care about being nude publicly. They explained that I had no right to privacy because I appeared in Playboy. Then came question after invasive question — about my body, sexual positions, sexual preferences, locations I had sex in — and suggestions that I probably liked the attention.”
Going through the deposition “took a toll” on Pamela. “I was stressed, hurt, humiliated, sad, in shock that these grown men thought so little of me,” she admits. In order to protect their unborn baby, Pamela and Tommy decided to drop the lawsuit. “The damage was done,” she explains. “Our response…f*** them. Hold our heads high. Let it go and move on with grace and dignity.”
Still, the release of the sex tape had its affect, and still does to this day. “We endured years of embarrassment, harassment and stress, not to mention what our families went through, our parents, our siblings, and how it affected our kids when they got older and were teased in school,” Pamela writes. “It was one of the most difficult things I’ve ever gone through. It is still a great cause of pain for all of us. It ruined lives, starting with our relationship — and it’s unforgivable that people, still to this day, think they can profit from such a terrible experience, let alone a crime.”
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