Lady Gaga Shared New Details About Being ‘Raped Repeatedly’ At Age 19 To Oprah Winfrey

• Lady Gaga shared new details about her past sexual assault in an interview with Oprah Winfrey.
• Oprah featured the singer on the first episode of her new Apple TV+ docuseries about mental health, The Me You Can’t See.
• Gaga revealed “the person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on a corner at my parents’ house because I was vomiting and sick.”

Lady Gaga is sharing more painful details about being the victim of rape when she was 19 and the struggles she’s faced afterward.

Gaga, now 35, got incredibly candid about her experience on the first episode of Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry’s new Apple TV+ docuseries about mental health, The Me You Can’t See.

Gaga opened up about the lead-up to her rape and what happened afterward. “I was 19 years old, and I was working in the business, and a producer said to me, ‘Take your clothes off,’ ” she recalled. “And I said no. And I left, and they told me they were going to burn all of my music.”

Years after the assault, Gaga said that she felt “full-on pain” and then she “went numb,” revealing that she actually became pregnant after being raped. Gaga said she was “sick for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks after” the numbness started “and I realized that it was the same pain that I felt when the person who raped me dropped me off pregnant on a 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.”

Gaga also shared that her rape made her a different person. “For a couple years, I was not the same girl,” she said. “It’s a really very real thing to feel like there’s a black cloud that is following you wherever you go, telling you that you’re worthless and should die. I used to scream and throw myself against the wall.”

Here’s everything Lady Gaga has revealed about her rape and aftermath, then and now.

Lady Gaga first opened up about her past sexual assault in 2020.

“I was raped repeatedly when I was 19 years old. I also developed PTSD as a result of being raped and not processing that trauma,” Gaga told Oprah in the earlier interview. The singer said she didn’t have anyone who could help her at the time. “I did not have a therapist, I did not have a psychiatrist, I did not have a doctor help me through it,” she explained.

Lady Gaga is not naming her abuser.

Gaga also said she’s decided not to publicly reveal the name of the person who raped her. “Through the #MeToo movement I have made the personal choice not to say who it is because I choose to not relive it,” she said. “That’s my personal choice. I hope that the world respects that.”

Gaga said in her most recent interview that she’s decided not to publicly name her abuser because she doesn’t “ever want to face that person again.”

Lady Gaga experienced painful physical symptoms.

As she became famous, her body eventually felt “intense pain” that mimicked the “illness” of being raped. She was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, a condition that causes widespread pain along with fatigue, sleep, memory, and mood issues, but Gaga said she suffered for years without knowing why. “I just didn’t stop moving and working and dancing through insurmountable pain … It was so frustrating … I was improperly medicated and I wasn’t in therapy,” she said.

“I was afraid I was gonna die,” Gaga said. “I would say I lived that way for about five years. And I’d rather face that, those five years, because they made me who I am,” she said.

Lady Gaga detailed her psychotic break and recovery.

Eventually, Gaga said she had a “psychotic break.” “I was triggered, really badly, in a court deposition. This part of the brain where you stay centered and you don’t disassociate, right? It slammed down. My whole body started tingling and I started screaming. I was in a hospital. It’s very difficult to describe what it feels like other than that you first start to tingle from head to toe and then you go numb,” she said. “The brain goes, ‘That’s enough, I don’t want to think about this anymore. I don’t want to feel this anymore.’ Boom. You break from reality as you know it. You have no concept of what’s going on around you. There is nothing wrong, but you are in a traumatic state. I remember going into the hospital and screaming, ‘Why is no one else panicking?”

After she went to the hospital, Gaga said she received good medical care. “[My psychiatrist] assembled a team for me and I went away to a place that I go to sometimes still for a reboot. They took care of me. They saved my life. And I’m very thankful,” she said, noting that she has an “unorthodox set of pills” that she takes. “I know this is controversial in a lot of ways, but medicine really helped me.”

Gaga also said that she later realized she wanted to tell her fans about her psychotic break. “I can’t live a lie, I’m an authentic person, and here I am, I’m perfectly imperfect and we all are,” she said. “We all have our things that we go through. I felt like, ‘Why shouldn’t I share this when I share all of myself with the world all the time?’ And I could maybe help people that have had psychotic breaks.”

Lady Gaga says she still struggles.

Gaga revealed in her most recent Oprah interview that she recently even harmed herself. “You know why it’s not good to self-harm? Because it makes you feel worse,” she said. “You think you’re gonna feel better ’cause you’re showing somebody, ‘Hey, look, I’m in pain.’ It doesn’t help. I always tell people, ‘Tell somebody, don’t show somebody.’ “

She pointed out that her recovery still continues. “Even if I have six brilliant months, all it takes is getting triggered once to feel bad, and when I say feel bad, I mean, wanna cut, think about dying,” she said. Gaga also said that recovery is not “a straight line,” despite people thinking “that you get sick and then you get cured.” But, she said, “it’s not like that, it’s just not like that.”

Lady Gaga hopes sharing her sexual assault will help others.

Now, Gaga said she wants to help others as a result of her experiences. “This happened for a reason. All the things I’ve been through. I was supposed to go through this. Even the rape—all of it. I radically accepted they happened because God was saying to me, ‘I’m gonna show you pain. And then you’re going to help other people who are in pain because you’re going to understand it,” she said. “Now, when I see someone in pain I can’t look away. I’m in pain too. Now, I’m in problem-solving mode. I’ve got my suit on and my heels and I’m ready to go.”

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