Tyler Perry Says He Plans to Build a Shelter for 'Trafficked Girls, Boys and Battered Women'
Tyler Perry‘s next big project hopes to bring help to people who need it most.
The pioneering filmmaker, writer and actor just opened a brand new movie studio in Atlanta, making him the first African-American to own a major studio outright. But achieving such a huge career milestone doesn’t mean he’s done trying to strive for the better.
“You know what, right now I’m dreaming about how do I build this shelter for trafficked girls, boys and battered women,” Perry, 50, told Essence at the grand opening of his studio on Saturday.
Perry previously opened up to Gayle King on CBS This Morning about his dream, explaining that he hopes to incorporate the shelter into his brad new 330 acre film studio in Atlanta.
“Having a compound that is a beautiful place right here somewhere on this 330 acres, where they’re trained in the business and they become self-sufficient, they live in nice apartments, there’s daycare, there’s all of these wonderful things that allows them to re-enter society and then pay it forward again. That’s what I hope to do soon,” he said.
For Perry, the dream is an intensely personal one, as he suffered from sexual abuse as a child.
He recently told PEOPLE he he went through years of turmoil after he was sexually molested by three different men and a woman by the time he was 10.
“I didn’t know what was going on or the far-reaching effects of it,” said Perry. “I just moved through it. Go onto the next thing. ‘Boys don’t cry, shut up and move on.'”
The entertainment mogul said it took him a long time to come to grips with his trauma.
“Holding on to all of that, not knowing what to do with it, there was a lot of anger in my teenage years, in my 20s,” said Perry. “A lot of anger, a lot of confusion, a lot of frustration trying to just be OK.”
In 1998 he staged his first play, I Know I’ve Been Changed, which centered on two brothers who survived child abuse.
