John Stamos says he was sexually abused as a child

“Full House” and “Big Shot” star John Stamos reveals in his upcoming memoir that he was sexually abused by a babysitter when just “10 or 11” years old.

“I didn't want the headlines to be that, and I didn't want the book to be over that,” the actor, musician and Emmy-nominated producer, 60, told People magazine about the abuse he recounts in “If You Would Have Told Me” (Henry Holt and Co.) due out Tuesday. “It was a page or something, but I felt I had to talk about it. It was weird. It was something that, I think, I was probably, like, 10 or 11 [when it happened]. I shouldn't have had to deal with those feelings.”

A two-decade celebrity ambassador for the child-advocacy organization Childhelp, Stamos told the magazine that, "I mean, I knew, it was always in the back" of his mind, "and I do so much advocacy for the [survivors]." He added, "I felt like I remembered it slightly. It has always been there, but I packed it away as people do, right?"

Memories of the abuse began resurfacing, he said, when he was writing an acceptance speech for an award for his work on behalf of abused children. “I started to write it, and that's when it really came out,” he said, not giving a time frame or specifying the award. “And then I thought, ‘No, tonight is not about me. It's about the kids. I'm going to pack it away again until the right moment.’ ”

Stamos as a child had not shared with anyone his allegation against the sitter. “I think I told myself, like, ‘Ah, it’s girls, man,’ ” adding, “It was like you’re playing dead so they’ll stop. But it wasn't totally aggressive. … I don’t know, it was not good.”

Stamos has since become a father himself, of 5-year-old Billy with his wife of almost six years, Caitlin McHugh. And while he can live with the memory of his own abuse some 50 years ago, he said, “I’ll tell you, if I found out someone was doing that to my son, that’s a totally different story.”