Lady Gaga is divulging new details about being raped by a music producer when she was 19.
The pop star, who first opened up about her sexual assault in a 2014 radio interview with Howard Stern, spoke candidly on Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry’s new mental-health docuseries, The Me You Can’t See, revealing that she became pregnant and suffered a “total psychotic break” after being raped by an unnamed producer 20 years her senior.
“I was 19 years old, and I was working in the business, and a producer said to me, ‘Take your clothes off,'” Gaga recalled. “And I said no. And I left, and they told me they were going to burn all my music. And they didn’t stop. They didn’t stop asking me, and then I just froze and I just — I don’t even remember.
Related Stories
“And I will not say his name,” she added. “I understand this #MeToo movement, and I understand people feel real comfortable with this, and I do not. I do not ever want to face that person again.”
Gaga developed post-traumatic stress disorder, but It would be years before she discovered this. The breakthrough came when she went to the hospital for chronic pain.
“First, I felt full-on pain, then I went numb. Then I was sick for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks after,” she explained. “And I realized it was the same pain I felt when the person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on the corner, at my parents’ house, because I was vomiting and sick. Because I’d been being abused, I was locked away in a studio for months.”
“The way that I feel when I feel pain is how I felt after I was raped,” Gaga added. “I’ve had so many MRIs and scans. They don’t find nothing, but your body remembers.”
This pain, along with the lingering trauma from being assaulted, led to the singer feeling like a different person around 2018 to 2019: “I had a total psychotic break, and for a couple years, I was not the same girl.”
Today, Gaga continues to struggle with the urge to self-harm.
“It’s a really very real thing to feel like there’s a black cloud following you wherever you go, telling you that you’re worthless and should die,” she said. “And I used to scream and throw myself against the wall.”
Gaga continued, “Even if I have six brilliant months, all it takes is getting triggered once to feel bad. And when I say I feel bad, I mean I want to cut, think about dying, wondering if I’m ever going to do it. I learned all the ways to pull myself out of it.”
“I don’t tell this story for my own self-service because, to be honest, it’s hard to tell,” she added. “I feel a lot of shame about it. How do I explain to people that I have privilege, I’ve got money, I’ve got power and I’m miserable? How do you do that? I’m not here to tell my story to you because I want anybody to cry for me. I’m good. But open your heart up for somebody else. Because I’m telling you, I’ve been through it and people need help. So, that’s part of my healing, being able to talk to you.”
The Me You Can’t See is now streaming on Apple TV+.
