The truth about Teri.

With all the media attention on Felicity Huffman, it’s not surprising that her Desperate Housewives camera-hog co-star Teri Hatcher has decided to drop her own headline-grabbing bomb – she was molested as a child by her uncle, a secret she’s chosen to keep hidden until just yesterday.

In an interview with Vanity Fair magazine, Teri discloses the details of her abuse at the hands of Richard Hayes Stone, the man married to her mother’s sister. Teri carried the burden of this secret for years, confessing all to authorities when Stone was arrested in 2002 for molesting a 14-year-old girl who later committed suicide. It was Teri’s testimony that gave the district attorney the evidence needed to sentence Stone to prison.

So why, after keeping quiet all these years, has Teri decided to tell all?

“I’m 41 years old, and it’s time for me to stop hiding,” she tells the magazine, justifying the timing of her revelation. Apparently, now that she’s grown up, Teri is no longer haunted by fears about how her past could affect her career, which was the primary reason she kept to herself for so long (and also ironic, given didn’t really have much of a career between Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman and Desperate Housewives). Of course, this still doesn’t explain why she sold her soul to Radio Shack…