Lady Gaga speaks about her sexual assault: 'I thought that I had brought it on myself in some way'

'It was something that really changed my life'

Gaga released the video for 'Till It Happens To You' in September (JACK TAYLOR/AFP/Getty Images)

Lady Gaga has spoken candidly about her experience of being sexually assaulted, saying: “It changed me completely”.

Speaking during a New York Times panel talk, Gaga told the audience she didn’t tell anyone of her assault for seven years.

“I didn’t know how to even think about it, accept it, how to not blame myself or think it was my fault. It was something that really changed my life, it changed who I was completely, it changed my body, it changed my thoughts.”

Gaga, who’s real name is Stefani Germanotta, also highlighted the “physical pain” you are left with as a victim of sexual assault, a side effect not often spoken about.

“When you go through a trauma like that it doesn’t just have immediate physical ramifications on you, for many people it has… trauma. When you re-experience it throughout the years after, it can trigger patterns in your body, physical distress. A lot of people, not only suffer from emotional and mental pain, but physical pain as a result of being abused, raped or traumatised in some type of way.”

Gaga was speaking at the talk along with songwriter Diane Warren, the writer and director Kirby Dick and film producer Amy Ziering, who have all collaborated on The Hunting Ground – a documentary film about incidents of rape on American university campuses.

Warren also spoke in the discussion about her being abused by a friend’s father when she was a child, explaining how she somehow felt to blame which led the panel to discuss why victims of sexual assault often feel they are to blame in our society.

Gaga explained that she related to this notion of self-blame: “Because of the way that I dress and the way that I’m provocative as a person, I thought that I had brought it on myself in some way, that it was my fault.”

Last year Gaga told radio host Howard Stern that she was sexually assaulted aged 19 by a man twenty years her senior.

She explained to the panel that it was her “own history” which led to her involvement with The Hunting Ground project, where she wrote and sung the soundtrack Till It Happens To You, with Warren.