When "Can't Buy Me Love" came out, star Amanda Peterson and her family were already hiding a heartbreaking secret: She had been raped.
The actress suffered the traumatic event when she was just 15, the same year she was cast in her most famous role, Cindy Mancini, opposite a young Patrick Dempsey.
"At the height of Mandy's career, she suffered a very serious trauma. She had been raped," Peterson's mother Sylvia revealed Monday on a new episode of "The Doctors."
She added that she didn't know about the horrific incident until two years later, adding that the man was 27, almost twice her daughter's age at the time.
"We were living together in L.A. and there was definitely a difference [after the rape occurred], I think it affected her forever," she continued.
"She just felt so ashamed. She didn't want people to know," her mother added. Peterson's father, James, said he was ready to lawyer up but "Mandy" refused to press charges.
James adds that his daughter became "more defensive, less trusting" and added "some of the sparkle was gone" after the incident. Shortly after, Amanda turned to drugs -- with her family saying she used both meth and heroin.
Amanda's father says his daughter was clean for the last two years of her life and underwent mandatory drug testing. Her sister, Anne-Marie, says she "had a lot of hope for her."
"She was a human being, she wasn't Cindy Mancini," adds Anne-Marie. "She was a human being and she was really loved."
"Amanda was 43 when she died and I believe the Lord just set her free, completely," her brother Jim said in closing.
The actress has a variety of prescription drugs in her system at the time of her death, including anti-anxiety meds, opiates and an anti-psychotic medication. She also had marijuana in her system.
The Weld County Coroner named the cause of death "accidental."
