An Impossible Beauty Rises Above Family Trauma

Theron in the Movie: Young Adult

Charlize Theron has said many times that she will never marry, I never suspected that she was lesbian so I didn’t understand why until I read how she survived on of the most traumatic experiences a young child could ever have:

His rants were, after all, not unusual.

But seconds later her father Charles lay dead after her mother Gerda blasted him four times with a gun.

Oscar winner Charlize has always maintained that her mother acted in self defense after her husband had threatened to kill them both with a shotgun.

But a new book, Killer Women: Fatal South African Females, casts doubt on what really happened 16 years ago at the family's home in the Western Cape.

The Hollywood star, just 15 at the time, has refused to talk publicly about the traumatic event, except to say that Gerda was a victim of domestic abuse.

Charles, they told police, was violent and aggressive.

Now, in the book by South African crime writer Chris Karsten, Charlize's aunt Elsa Malan insists her "mild-mannered" brother “would never have attacked his wife or adored daughter” [DENIAL is not just a river in Egypt].

But she stops short of saying that Charles was murdered (It’s not murder if he was killed in self defense).