Denise Richards On Charlie Sheen's Arrest: "It's Sad"

Denise Richards is weighing in on the Christmas Day altercation between Charlie Sheen and Brooke Mueller that landed her ex in jail.

"It's sad," says Denise, who had to tell her daughters Sam, 5, and Lola, 4, about their dad's incarceration. "Perhaps people can understand what I went through."

Denise recalls for Oprah Winfrey the circumstances surrounding the end of her own marriage to Charlie in 2006, when she filed for a restraining order against the Two and a Half Men star.

Revealing that there were "a lot of verbal arguments that got heated that scared me," Denise says that Charlie never hit her, though there were incidents where he shoved her.

"I was in a very dark place," she says. "Especially when I filed the restraining order, I was humiliated. I was scared. I was embarrassed."

After enduring a nasty divorce, Denise insists that she and her ex "are in a great place" these days. As for her girls, she reports, "My daughters are my pillars of strength."