Lady Gaga reveals she was raped at 19

Grammy Award-winning performer Lady Gaga revealed that she was raped as a teenager by a man 20 years older than her.

 

In an interview with radio host Howard Stern, the pop diva was talking about her controversial single "Swine" that stirred a lot of talk after she incorporated vomit art while performing it on stage when she made the revelation.

 

"I wrote a song called 'Swine.' The song is about rape. The song is about demoralization. The song is about rage and fury and passion, and I had a lot of pain that I wanted to release," she said.

 

"So I said to myself, I want to sing this song while I'm ripping heart on a drum kit and then I want to get on a mechanical bull — which is probably one of the most demoralizing things you could put a female on in her underwear. And then I want this chick to throw up on me in front of the world so that I can tell them, 'You know what? You could never ever degrade me as much as I could degrade myself, and look how beautiful it is when I do."

 

Gaga was then asked by Sterm to confirm if she was indeed raped by a record producer, to which she initially replied, “I don’t want to … Happy times! Let’s talk about happy things!”

 

However, she admitted going through through some "horrific things," opening up about undergoing physical, mental, and emotional therapy to be able to heal over the years.

 

"I was about 19. I went to a Catholic school and all these crazy stuff happened. 'Was it just the way adults are?'" said the 28-year-old singer.

 

The singer only had the courage to admit the horrible incident to herself years after it had happened, which helped her move on.

 

"It didn't affect me as much right after as it did about four or five years later. I was so traumatized by it that, I was like, just keep going. I just had to get out of there. I wasn't even willing to admit that anything had happened... I don't know what I was thinking. I didn't tell anybody. And I didn't even tell myself for the longest time. It wasn't until I was a little bit older that I went, 'Wow, that was really messed up.'"

 

Lady Gaga also revealed that she never confronted the man who raped her, and may never have the courage to because it might "terrify and paralyze" her. "I saw him one time in a store and I was so paralyzed by fear."

 

It was also hard to tell the public about her experience for fear that it might affect the people's perception of her and her music.

 

"I don't want to be defined by it. I'll be damned if somebody say that every creatively intelligent thing that I've ever did has all boiled down to [that horrible incident]. I'm going to take responsibility for all my pain looking beautiful and all the things that I made out of my strife," she said.

 

After a few years, she was able to move on from the horrible incident. "I was like, 'You know what, all this drinking and all this nonsense — you have to go to the source. Otherwise, it just won't go away," she said. — Bianca Rose Dabu/JST, GMA News