Lady Gaga reveals early rape

Lady Gaga is revealing that her past includes sexual assault.

She appeared on Howard Stern's SiriusXM radio show on Tuesday and began talking about her songSwine, from her 2013 Artpop album.
"The song is about rape. The song is about demoralization. The song is about and rage and fury and passion. I had a lot of pain I wanted to release."

Stern asked if she had been raped by a music company executive. "I feel like you were raped by someone. I think that's what you're saying."

Gaga, 28, who is dating Chicago Fire actor Taylor Kinney, replied with, "I went through some horrific things. I'm able to laugh now because I've gone through a lot of, you know, mental and physical therapy and emotional therapy to heal over the years."

She didn't name the person but she says he was 20 years her senior. "I was about 19," when it happened she said. "I went to Catholic school and then all this crazy stuff happened and I was going, 'Oh is this just the way adults are?'"

She was naive, she says.

While Gaga never detailed the scene, she went on to say, "It happens every day. It's really scary and it's sad and it didn't affect me as much right after as it did about four or five years later."

It's a delayed reaction, said Stern.

"It hit me so hard. I was so traumatized by it that I was like, 'Just keep going,' because I just had to get out of there," says Gaga.

Stern said he had talks to other women who were raped and he said, "It almost doesn't register for a couple of years."

Gaga agreed: "I wasn't willing to admit that anything had happened." And, she says, "I didn't tell anybody. I didn't tell myself for the longest time."

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But she also doesn't want everyone to focus on it now.

"I don't want to be defined by it. I'll be damned that every creatively intelligent thing I ever did is all boiled down to one (expletive) head who did that to me. I'm going to take responsibility."

Gaga also told Stern she has never confronted the guy. "I think it would terrify me. I think it would paralyze me. I saw him one time in a store and it paralyzed me. It wasn't until I was older that I went, 'Wow, that was really messed up.'"

Lady Gaga is not the, um, conventional celebrity. She wears, says and does what she wants, including changing her hair up pretty much daily. USA TODAY's Arienne Thompson details the singer's latest 'dos (and some dont's). (Photo: Kevin Mazur)

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