Amid the release of an extensive investigation into celebrated labor leader Cesar Chavez’s sexual abuse of girls, civil rights icon Dolores Huerta has shared she was also one of his victims.

Huerta, who co-founded the National Farm Workers Association with Chavez and activist Gilbert Padilla, issued a personal statement Wednesday morning following her inclusion in a bombshell exposé by The New York Times.

“I am nearly 96 years old, and for the last 60 years have kept a secret because I believed that exposing the truth would hurt the farmworker movement I have spent my entire life fighting for,” she wrote in a post on Medium.

“I have encouraged people to always use their voice,” her statement went on. “Following the New York Times’ multi-year investigation into sexual misconduct by Cesar Chavez, I can no longer stay silent and must share my own experiences.”

Huerta, who coined the “Sí, se puede” slogan which has galvanized Latino civil rights and labor movements for generations, referred to two sexual encounters with Chavez that happened in the 1960s, both of which resulted in pregnancies.

“The first time I was manipulated and pressured into having sex with him, and I didn’t feel I could say no because he was someone that I admired, my boss and the leader of the movement I had already devoted years of my life to,” she wrote. “The second time I was forced, against my will, and in an environment where I felt trapped.”

Having survived abuse and sexual violence prior to Chavez’s assaults, Huerta said, she had convinced herself the incidents were something to “endure alone and in secret” and kept both pregnancies hidden before arranging for the children to be raised by other families.

Huerta explained that she kept Chavez’s abuse secret to protect the labor movement, which had been her “life’s work.”

“The formation of a union was the only vehicle to accomplish and secure those rights and I wasn’t going to let Cesar or anyone else get in the way,” she wrote. “I channeled everything I had into advocating on behalf of millions of farmworkers and others who were suffering and deserved equal rights.”

Huerta went on to write that her “heart aches for everyone who suffered alone and in silence for years” and stressed Chavez’s actions were not a reflection of the movement they both helped foster.

The Times’ report details accounts from two women who claim Chavez groomed and sexually abused them from the period between 1972 and 1977, when they were both girls and he was in his 40s. The investigation, which draws from interviews with over 60 people as well as union records, audio recordings and photographs, also unearthed allegations from other accusers, revealing a larger pattern of sexual misconduct at play during the height of Chavez’s power.

Following the paper’s inquiries to the United Farm Workers union about allegations against Chavez, the organization canceled its annual celebration of their late leader in light of what they called “profoundly shocking” accusations.

One of the most celebrated figures in Mexican American history, Chavez organized farmworkers’ historic Delano grape strike of 1965–1970 along with Huerta, becoming a force and face of the expanding labor movement. In Latino communities across the U.S., many prominent streets and civic landmarks have been named in his honor.

Critics of Chavez, who died in 1993, have accused him of wielding autocratic control over the movement and stoking hostility against undocumented immigrants, whom he blamed for being the source of strikebreakers.

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