Lady Gaga Tells Howard Stern She Was Sexually Assaulted As a Teenager

"You know what? You could never, ever degrade me as much as I degrade myself, and look how beautiful it is when I do." —Lady Gaga

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Yesterday, Lady Gaga revealed on The Howard Stern Show that she was raped by a man who was 20 years her senior when she was 19 years old. The subject came up when Stern asked Gaga about performing her song "Swine" earlier this year at South by Southwest and having British artist Millie Brown vomit paint on her while she rode a mechanical bull. Gaga explained that "Swine" is about—among other things—rape, demoralization, and rage. 

"I had a lot of pain I wanted to release," she said. "I said to myself, I want to sing this song while I'm ripping hard on a drum kit and then I want to get on a mechanical bull—which is probably one of the most demoralizing things you can put a female on, you know in her underwear—and I want this chick to throw up on me in front of the world, so that I can tell them, 'You know what? You could never, ever degrade me as much as I degrade myself, and look how beautiful it is when I do."

Afterward, Stern tried to press Gaga on the particulars of the incident, suggesting it was a music producer who raped her. Gaga did not reveal the name of her assaulter but according to Mark Geragos, who is Kesha's lawyer in her sexual assault case against superproducer Dr. Luke, it was Luke who raped Gaga. However, both Luke and Gaga's reps have denied Geragos claim.  

Gaga went onto tell Stern that the incident didn't affect her immediately after as much as it did years later. However, she eventually overcame it after years of mental and physical therapy. "I saw him one time in a store and I was so paralyzed by fear," said Gaga. "It wasn't until I was a little bit older that I went, 'Wow, that was really messed up.'"

Despite the heavy subject matter, Gaga was actually on the show to promote her new duet album with Tony Bennett, Cheek to Cheek. You can peep a portion of her interview with Stern below. 

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