Mariska Hargitay suffered ‘secondary trauma’ from ‘Law & Order: SVU’ storylines

nypost.com:

Selena Gomez published Monday in Interview magazine. Hargitay, who has been married to “Blue Bloods” actor Peter Hermann since 2004, added, “My husband Peter is always like, anytime I go anywhere, my first question is, ‘What’s the crime rate here?’ So it’s on the brain.”She continued, “There’s been times when I didn’t know how to protect myself, and I think I was definitely a victim of secondary trauma from being inundated with these stories and knowing that they were true.

Those were the parts that I didn’t know how to metabolize, just because of the sheer volume of it.”On the show, Benson is constantly solving heinous sex crimes, and in real life, that motivated Hargitay to create the Joyful Heart Foundation in 2004.

The foundation’s mission is “to transform society’s response to sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse, support survivors’ healing, and end this violence forever.”To date, it has aided in solving thousands of sex crimes.

The actress said that with her foundation, “I would feel like, well, at least I’m doing something about it.”Hargitay told the “Only Murders in the Building” actress that when she started on the show, “I was not the boss and I had no power.”“I was also overwhelmed and scared and kind of looked up to everybody.