Miss USA hopeful: 'I was a product of rape'

Valerie Gatto representing Pennsylvania in the Miss USA 2014 pageant has opened up about how she was conceived when her mother was raped at knifepoint.

The 24-year-old beauty queen revealed to Today.com that a man dressed in black attacked her mother when she was just 19.

Valerie has decided to use this tragic story as a platform to help educate women about sexual assault.

'I believe God put me here for a reason,' she said. 'To give [people] hope that everything is possible and you can't let your circumstances define your life.'

Now, Valerie is an advocate for sexual assault awareness, traveling the country to talk to women from 18 to 30 about how to protect themselves against violence and sexual aggression.

And she says winning the Miss USA crown would give her an even larger platform for spreading her message of hope and solidarity.

'I hope to show others how to be proactive, what to do, to be present, to be aware of your surroundings,' she said. 'It's so awesome to see their responses. They say it changes their life.'

On her biography website, Valerie - who currently works as a marketing consultant for a periodontal practice - explains that she was six years old when she began asking questions about her absent father, whom she'd never met.

Finally, when she was ten, her mother told her the truth.

She revealed that she didn't tell her family she was pregnant, and had every intention of putting Valerie up for adoption until the night that she was born.

Valerie told Today: 'Being a child of a rape, not knowing who my father is, not knowing if he's ever been found, most people would think it's such a negative situation.'

Valerie told TribLive.com in December that even though her conception was under terrifying circumstances, she is always grateful that her mother lived through it.

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