Sandra Bullock Recalls Terrifying Home Invasion That Left Her With PTSD

Sandra Bullock opened up about her experience with PTSD since her 2014 home invasion during a new episode of Red Table Talk. The Oscar winner told hosts Jada Pinkett Smith and Willow Smith that she hasn’t been alone since the day of the incident. In June 2014, Bullock was home when Joshua Corbett broke in. He was reportedly there for over an hour while Bullock was asleep. Corbett took his own life after a standoff with police in May 2018.

Willow brought up the incident during the new episode since she was a victim of a home invasion herself. Last year, a stalker and convicted sex offender broke into her home when she was away for Christmas. Bullock, 57, and Willow, 21, both said they continue to feel the ramifications of their experiences, notes Glamour.

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Bullock was worried that the incident would not end well. Thankfully, her son, Louis, was spending the night at her nanny’s apartment. “Had he been home, I would’ve run to the closet, and it would have changed our destiny forever,” Bullock recalled. She “wasn’t the same” after the home invasion. “I haven’t been alone since the day it happened,” she said.

The healing process has come with “some layers” to it, Bullock said. After the invasion, Bullock didn’t understand what post-traumatic stress disorder was. “I would look left, out of a car, not right. I would look left, and I would start sobbing. And I thought to myself, I’m a single parent, and this child is going to absorb nothing but fear and trauma and shame from me in the most pivotal times of his life,” she explained. “And I was like, I don’t want to drop that load of baggage onto my beautiful child.”

The PTSD treatment Eye Movement Desensitization Reprocessing Therapy (EMDR) was the “most healing” for Bullock. She was apprehensive about it at first, but it helped her work through her feelings about the invasion. It also helped her open up about her past relationships and scary childhood moments. “When I got out of it, I realized I have surrounded myself often with unsafe people and situations and put myself there,” she said. “I have no one else to blame but myself because that was the most familiar feeling I had.”

Corbett was caught after breaking into Bullock’s home in June 2014. She called 911 herself. Police later found photos of Bullock on him, as well as a letter he wrote claiming to be Bullock’s husband, according to the Los Angeles Times. In 2017, he was convicted of five years of probation and ordered to seek treatment at a mental health facility. Bullock was also granted a 10-year protective order. In May 2018, Corbett barricaded himself in his home in Los Angeles when police tried to serve a warrant because he missed a court date. A SWAT team tried to talk him into surrendering, but when police got into the home, they discovered he took his own life. Bullock told Willow she believed the system failed him.

Red Table Talk is available on Facebook Watch. Bullock can be seen in The Unforgivable, which hits Netflix on Dec. 10. She stars as a woman who tried to rebuild her life after she is released from prison. Vincent D’Onofrio and Viola Davis also star in the movie.