Oprah Shares Tears with Piers

Piers Morgan recently took over Larry King's talk show gig and made a big deal about his first guest - Oprah - and the media mogul didn't disappoint. Oprah's discussion ran the gamut of her life experiences, beginning with her poor upbringing in Mississippi and culminating with her new cable TV network, OWN, but perhaps the most shocking admission was delving into the sexual abuse and pregnancy she experienced in her early teens. After years of sexual abuse beginning at the age of 9, Oprah started "running the streets" and fell pregnant at age 14. Because she'd been so much trouble for her mother in Mississippi, she was sent to live with her father in Nashville while secretly pregnant. One of the first harsh things her father said to her was "'These are the rules of the house, you're going to obey the rules, you have a 10 o'clock curfew, and I would rather see a daughter of mine floating down the Cumberland River ... than to bring shame on this family and the indecency of an illegitimate child,'" Oprah recalled. Her solution was to try to kill herself and her unborn baby, who was later born prematurely and died. Losing the baby gave her a "second chance" and was a "relief," she said. "I went back to school and nobody knew because had anybody known at that time, I wouldn't have been able to be head of the student council. I wouldn't have been able to be speaking champion in forensics. I wouldn't have been able to be Miss fire prevention. I wouldn't have been chosen as one of the two teenagers in the state of Tennessee to go to the White House conference on youth. None of those things would have happened. The entire trajectory of my life would have been different."