David Schwimmer: 'My exes were sexually abused'

David Schwimmer has claimed that two of his ex-girlfriends were sexually abused as children.

The Friends star admitted to channelling the intense anger he harboured against his partners' attackers into his 2010 melodrama Trust, which focuses on a couple's attempt to recover from their teenage daughter's rape.

"I've had two girlfriends who were victims of child sexual abuse," he told Seven. "That sensitised me to the issue in a way that I hadn't been before.

"You want to find [the attacker]. In my girlfriend's case the abuser was a family member who was still around and I couldn't get my head around that.

"I told her that I had to know if I was ever in the same room as him because I wouldn't be responsible for my actions."

Schwimmer is an active director of the Rape Treatment Centre in Santa Monica, California, which aims to help victims of date rape and child rape.

He admitted last year that he had been inspired to direct Trust after working with the Rape Foundation.

Schwimmer became a father for the first time in May, after his wife Zoe Buckman gave birth to a daughter named Cleo.

Watch the trailer for David Schwimmer's Trust below.