In 1979, Jane Fonda met then-teenager Mary Williams during the actress-turned-activist's performing arts camp. Williams lived in a rough area in Oakland, California and was raised with five other children by a single mother. After a traumatic experience, Fonda decided to adopt Williams and treated her like family. Though she wasn't legally adopted, Williams said that the Grace & Frankie star served as a "lifeline" for her at that time. Here's the tragic incident that brought them together.

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How Jane Fonda & Mary Williams Met

Williams' mother had a tough time looking after all her children. She initially studied to become a welder at trade school to support her family. That all failed when she injured her knee at work. The accident turned her into a "zombie" around her children. She started beating them over little issues. Williams wanted to escape and sought that in the summer camp hosted by Fonda and her then-husband Tom Hayden. At the age of 11, she met the actress at the Laurel Springs Children's Camp in Santa Barbara. The Barbarella star instantly took a liking to her.

The two grew close that summer that they'd hug each other whenever they met. Williams was a stranger to that affection. But naturally, she felt like it was safe to tell the actress about her tumultuous life at home. With her older sisters being dropouts who got pregnant in their teens, Williams dreamed of an entirely better future. One of her older sisters also became a drug addict and ended up losing herself in the streets.

According to Fonda, she was initially drawn to Williams because of her brilliance. Everyone adored her at camp as well. Williams attended the camp for two years but didn't return until the year after. "When she showed up at camp … you could tell that she was a special person," said Fonda of their encounter. "And she came back for several years. And then she didn't come back …"

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Why Jane Fonda Adopted Mary Williams

When Williams returned to camp, Fonda noticed that she seemed different. It was after the teen was asked to come in for an acting audition at 14. "It turned out not to be an audition," she recalled on Oprah's Next Chapter. "I was assaulted. Sexually assaulted." She did not expect it to happen and even blamed herself for a while. "I said, 'I'm going to avoid that. I'm not going to be that kind of person. I'm not going to be dominated by a man,'" Williams remembered telling herself before the horrific experience. "But after that rape, I didn't believe in myself anymore. I thought I [had been] foolish to ever think that I could escape that."

The experience took a toll on Williams. She was starting to flunk out of school. "Her grades were failing. I mean … this is a hugely smart person, but she was failing," Fonda recounted. "I said, 'If you bring your grades up … by the end of the year and your mother permits you, you come down and live with us in Santa Monica.'" Though Williams "literally felt like I was dying," she didn't hesitate to take on the actress' offer. "When I saw that opportunity, I ran. I ran for it," she said.

Fonda's life was a huge shock to Williams at first, and changes kept coming in the actress' household. "I had no idea that, at the time, I was going to end up married to Ted Turner, and my black daughter was going to end up sitting at a table in a southern plantation, you know, being served by black people, the only black person at the table," said the Monster-in-Law star.

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How Jane Fonda Saved Mary Williams

"The Black Panthers, the Fondas, and the Turners, are as different as families can be," Williams said of her blended family. "But they all had one crucial thing in common: They were not shy about acting on their political beliefs … For them, the highest form of patriotism was dissent, all in the spirit of trying to make the world a better place." However, she admitted that she felt alienated from the family at some point. It almost strained her relationship with the actress.

"I was slowly realizing I was alienating myself from people," she said. "And the fact that I did it to the person who I love the most in the whole wide world made me realize that I was really in crisis, you know, and something was really out of whack." Eventually, Williams got over it by focusing on helping others. She became an activist like Fonda. She previously taught English and worked for the United Nations in Morocco. She also helped find hundreds of lost boys in Sudan.

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