VIDEO: Jesse James' Excuse: I'm The Victim of Child Abuse; Shame Drove Me To Cheat
May 26 2010, Published 5:55 a.m. ET
Bad boy biker Jesse James dished up excuses and remorse as he blubbered like a baby in his first interview since his serial cheating on wife Sandra Bullock was exposed, and Breaking Celebrity News has the clip.
The tattooed love rat revealed he was the victim of childhood abuse and claimed that it made him cheat.
He also insisted he wasn’t a sex addict!
Watch the video on Breaking Celebrity News
"I grew up with a huge amount of shame and fear and abandonment on my shoulders from a very young age and I think, you know, the way my mind rationalized cheating, 'Well, you know, I might as well do whatever I can to like run her off cause she is going to find out what I am anyway and leave me anyway,'" James told ABC’s Nightline.
The 41-year-old confessed to cheating on the Oscar-winning actress with multiple women and cited shame and lack of self-worth as factors that drove him into a web of serial cheating.
“The struggle within myself for the things that I did... to damage marriage and my life and everything else, it's all me," said the disgraced owner of the West Coast Choppers bike shop.
"I'm doing it because, you know, I've basically never felt good enough for anyone.
"There's a lot of people who are abused that go on to abuse, or go on to do drugs...or go on to, you know, cut themselves... they'll do it to self-sabotage their life to because, because of their abuse they've never felt good enough," he added.
"Why would I totally destroy my wife's life and humiliate her when I knew it was bad, you know?
“I may seem like a monster in peoples' eyes, but I'm not that kind of person where I will willfully, you know, 'I'm gonna get her, I'll show her,' that's not what it's about. It's about trying to push someone away that I thought was going to leave anyway."
In an interview that will be criticized for James not accepting blame and instead using it as a vehicle to blame his past for his actions, James admitted he had “a little bit of an ego” when he checked into rehabilitation in March.
"After about two days I realized, 'Wow, I'm kind of more messed up than most of the people here.' It was like peeling an onion. Every day it was a new revelation about myself and the things I've been doing," James said of the month long stint.
He said he received treatment for sex addiction and anger management, as Breaking Celebrity News was first to exclusively report.
"I cried more in rehab in the last 30 days than I have in my whole life. No BS. That's the truth.”
"Bike builder, Monster Garage TV star, all that stuff is a huge smokescreen so that people won't see that I'm a scared, abused kid, a seven-year-old.”
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Upon telling Bullock he would attend rehab, James said Bullock told him "she was proud of me."
James, who was a child of divorce, fingered his father Larry as a man who physically and emotionally abused him.
"He beat my [expletive] pretty good a bunch of times... I just remember, like, clinched teeth, strained-neck look on his face," James said.
"My whole childhood, I never had a chance to be a kid... I was always scared."
He recounted one incident when his dad chased him in the dark.
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"I tripped over this little low fence wire and snapped my wrist and I remember my dad laughed at me when I hit the ground and called me a dummy," James said.
"I was petrified of my dad... It wasn't so much getting the sh** beat out of me or getting my arm broken or getting kicked or whatever or punched, it was the in-between time.
“It was the fear of that happening again," he added, getting emotional.
"I was a terrorized kid and, I mean, it's really tough for me to think about now because... (daughter) Sunny is the age that I was when my dad broke my arm."
James' father reportedly denied the allegations, in an email to Nightline.
In the wake of Bullock’s Oscar triumph, multiple women came forward and claimed to have slept with James -- one of them while Bullock was filming what would be her Oscar-winning role in The Blind Side. Breaking Celebrity News has reported James admitted to cheating with up to seven women.