Grammy award winner Lady Gaga broke down into tears as she spoke about being raped and left pregnant by a music producer at the age of 19. The singer spoke about her abuse during the maiden episode of Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey's docuseries The Me You Can't See released on Apple TV+ on Thursday.
The 35-year-old singer, whose real name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, did not reveal the name of her sexual abuser stating that she doesn't want to "face that person again."
Gaga's Rapist Threatened to Burn Her Music
Recalling the harrowing experience, Gaga said: "I was 19 years old, and I was working in the business, and a producer said to me, 'Take your clothes off. 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—I don't even remember."
Stating that several years after being raped she suffered a "total psychotic break" and was in an "ultra-state of paranoia" leading to cancellation of several dates during a world tour, Gaga said it was because the sexual abuse trauma resurfaced.
"I [couldn't] feel my own body," Gaga said adding that it happened when she went to a hospital to seek treatment for the physical pain.
"First I felt full-on pain, then I went numb. And then I was sick for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks after, 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," she said, adding: "I was locked away in a studio for months."
Insisting that she doesn't plan on publicly identifying her abuser, "I do not ever want to face that person again," Gaga said that she has been suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder and fibromyalgia, a condition that causes pain all over the body.
"The way that I feel when I feel pain is how I felt after I was raped," she said adding: "I've had so many MRIs and scans. They don't find nothing, but your body remembers. I couldn't feel anything. I disassociated. It's like your brain goes offline. You don't know why no one else is panicking, but you are in an ultra state of paranoia."
Gaga Kept Quite For the Fear of 'Being Defined'
The 'Rain on Me' singer said that she kept quite for several years as she feared being "defined by it."
"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 d---head that did that to me. I'm going to take responsibility for all my pain looking beautiful," she said.
The singer, who described her process of healing her mental health as a "slow rise," said that it took her two and a half years to recover, but "getting triggered once" makes her slip back into the physical and emotional pain.
It was during an interview in 2014 that Gaga first revealed about her rape during an interview with Howard Stern. The sexual abuser, who is 20 years older to the Singer, inspired her track 'Swine' released in 2013.
