Lady Gaga has revealed that she was raped as a teenager and that she went through emotional therapy to recover from the event.
The singer, who was appearing on Howard Stern’s radio show, made the claim after the host asked her about the meaning of her song Swine.
After Stern suggested the song alluded to a sexual assault he then asked if she’d been raped by a record producer. The singer replied: “I went through some horrific things that I’m able to laugh [at] now, because I’ve gone through a lot of mental and physical therapy and emotional therapy to heal over the years.”
She added: “I was a shell of my former self at one point. I was not myself. To be fair, I was about 19. I went to Catholic school and then all this crazy stuff happened, and I was going, ‘Oh, is this just the way adults are?’ I was very naive.”
The singer went on to talk about how she was determined to not be defined by the incident before discussing the man who raped her, who was 20 years older than her at the time.
“Because it wasn’t until I was a little bit older that I went, ‘Wow, that was really messed up,” she said.
“You were 20 years older than me. I was a kid.”
