Lady Gaga shares details of her sexual assault and the pregnancy and PTSD that followed
Music Features Sexual assault
Lady Gaga shares more details concerning the sexual assault that left her pregnant at 19. In an interview on The Me You Can’t See, the new Apple+ docuseries hosted by Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry, she opens up about how the untreated PTSD affected her for years following the attack.
“I was 19 years old, and I was working in the business, and a producer said to me, ‘Take your clothes off,’” she says during the episode. “And I said no. And I left, and they told me they were going to burn all of my music. And they didn’t stop. They didn’t stop asking me, and I just froze and–I don’t even remember.” She adds, “The person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on a corner.”
The star has not name the producer, saying, “I do not ever want to face that person again.”
Lady Gaga first discussed her assault in 2014 with Howard Stern, saying that her song “Swine” was about the rape she suffered at the hands of the music producer. At the time, she told the radio DJ, “I didn’t tell anyone for I think seven years. I didn’t know how to accept it. I didn’t know how to not blame myself or think it was my fault. It changed who I was completely. It changed my body, it changed thoughts.”
In her interview with Oprah, she dives deeper into how the rape and subsequent pregnancy affected her emotionally and physically: “I never dealt with it, and then all of a sudden I started to experience this incredible intense pain throughout my entire body that mimicked the illness I felt after I was raped.” She describes the mental response that followed as a “total psychotic break.”
She continued to re-live the symptoms that appeared during her pregnancy, and the feelings of being abandoned by the producer, who was 20 years older than her. “First I felt full-on pain, then I felt numb, and then I was sick for weeks after. I realized that it was the same pain that I felt when the person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on a corner [by] my parent’s house, because I was vomiting and sick. Because I had been abused, and I was locked away in a studio for months.”
The sexual assault occurred two years before she released her globally successful debut album The Fame in 2008. The star performed “Till It Happens To You,” with survivors of sexual assault at the 2016 Oscars, and has worked with numerous sexual assault and PTSD organizations over the years.
Even after sharing more details now, her experience should not define her. In the 2014 interview she said, “I’ll be damned if somebody’s going to say that every creatively intelligent thing that I ever did is all boiled down to one dickhead that did that to me. I’m going to take responsibility for all my pain looking beautiful and all the things I’ve made out of my strife. I did that.”
23 Comments
I hope to god this rapist piece of shit gets outed.
i really hope so. you know gaga wasn’t the first or the last, and if he’s still in the industry, it’s still happening.
She says she doesn’t want to face him, so I can see why she wouldn’t want to name him. I wouldn’t want to say my abuser’s name in public and give them even a millisecond of attention. I hope instead they are nameless, dead in an unmarked ditch somewhere.
That’s a completely valid point of view. The one thing that would make me hesitate with Gaga is that if this producer is still working in the music industry (and that’s not a given) then she is 100% not the last person he abused, and I think that she has an ethical responsibility to name him in order to protect other women.
There’s already been a lot of speculation about who it is, with one name consistently coming up. She’s given some identifying details in past interviews. If it’s the guy whose name keeps coming up, he no longer works in the producing industry. He more or less disappeared off the face of the internet a few years back, so I don’t know what he’s doing instead.After the Kesha/Dr. Luke lawsuits I think it’ll be a very long time before any artist publicly names a rapist working in the music industry, though.
Not revealing who it was certainly ensures that he got to and gets to do the same thing or worse to countless other women. It needs to stop. Yesterday.
Did she ever say what happened with the pregnancy, because it’s weirdly not mentioned in this article. If she had an abortion, and has publicly talked about it, that should be said, so as to further destigmatize the procedure.
Never publicly. I’m a big fan of Gaga and fans have speculated the meaning of her Marry The Night music video being about an abortion.
She doesn’t owe anyone that story, whether she had an abortion or not. She can reveal that publicly if she wants to but it’s not something the public is owed.
Agreed. I just immediately wondered why it wasn’t in the piece. That’s why–because she hasn’t said anything. It’s not then an example of bad journalism.
Holy SHIT.I give it a few days before the dude is identified.
yes I hope so! Before all the comments come flooding in about why she doesn’t pursue this in court, nothing is quite as traumatic as having to relive this in court. I only got to the step of trying to fill the paperwork for a sexual assault from some lawyers and I spiralled so bad I ended up relapsing. I can’t imagine actually having to sit in a courtroom and have your experience questioned again and again.
I believe she would have been an inspiration to many no matter what shitty thing happened to her. That’s why it means so much that she talks about this publicly. I have nothing but admiration for her.
Big fan of hers. Glad she overcame this and is still creating and performing, even if Chromatica was not for me as great as her best work
Name the guy so he is stopped. Or tell police, so he is stopped.
lol tell the police.
Do what it takes.
What do people think her best album is? As much as I love the first two, I think Joanne
I love Joanne and think it’s criminally underrated—such a good album. That said, I have to be deeply boring and say The Fame Monster.I honestly love all of her albums except for Artpop, though.
The Fame/ The Fame Monster is a perfect album or albums
Even though it’s not a particularly deep album, I really do love Chromatica and I’m sad that it came out in the midst of the pandemic. Deserved way more promotion and would have been a killer tour, though I’m sure that could still happen down the road.
I am sure that if she eventually does a tour for Chromatica, it will be a great show
I am sure that if she eventually does a tour for Chromatica, it will be a great show