BEVERLY HILLS, March 17, (THEWILL) – American singer and actress, Demi Lovato, has opened up concerning her experience with sexual assault, saying, she was raped on two occasions and the first cost her her virginity at age 15.
Lovato disclosed this in her new documentary, “Dancing With The Devil,” which premiered on Tuesday.
She stated that she was first raped by someone she knew during the period she was working with Disney in the late 2000s.
The music star further stated that she went through trauma as she kept seeing her abuser “all the time” after the incident and nothing was done to him even after she had opened up.
“I lost my virginity in a rape. And, you know what, f**k it, I’m just gonna say it: my #MeToo story is me telling somebody that someone did this to me, and they never got in trouble for it. They never got taken out of the movie they were in,” she said.
Lovato mentioned that the incident began on a consensual note but she later withdrew her consent but her abuser continued and later traumatised her.
“We were hooking up but I said, ‘Hey, this is not going any farther, I’m a virgin and I don’t want to lose it this way.’ And that didn’t matter to them, they did it anyway. And I internalised it and I told myself it was my fault because I still went in the room with him, I still hooked up with him,” she said.
The singer did not disclose where the assault took place or the identity of her abuser and she also did not reveal whom she told about the incident at the time.
Lovato, however, stated that the incident occurred when she was “a part of that Disney crowd that publicly said they were waiting till marriage.”
She narrated how she was later raped again and “left for dead” in her fatal 2018 overdose by her drug dealer.
According to the singer, both experiences were “textbook trauma re-enactments, and I really beat myself up for years, which is also why I had a really hard time coming to terms with the fact that it was a rape when it happened.”
The actress disclosed she had to speak about the incidents “because everyone that that happens to should absolutely speak their voice if they can and feel comfortable doing so.”
