Lady Gaga had 'total psychotic break' after she was sexually assaulted as a teen by music producer

Lady Gaga says she had a ‘total psychotic break’ when she was sexually assaulted at the age of 19 by a music producer and ‘dropped off pregnant on a street corner’.  

The singer, 35, spoke about the traumatic event during an appearance on Prince Harry and Oprah’s new Apple TV+ mental health docuseries, The Me You Can’t See. 

Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, recalled: ‘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 don’t even remember.’

Gaga, who has never mentioned the producer’s name for fear of seeing him again, said she blacked out amid the assault, and purged herself by being physically sick for an extended period as a way of coping with the pain. 

‘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,’ she said.

She said she was ‘at [her] parents’ house amid the illness because she was ‘being abused’ and ‘locked away in a studio for months.’

Gaga said the incident left her scarred physically and emotionally, which lingers to this day.

The singer said a doctor advised her to see a psychiatrist for her chronic pain, leading to her diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. 

‘I had a total psychotic break, and for a couple years, I was not the same girl,’ Gaga said. ‘The way that I feel when I feel pain was how I felt after I was raped. I’ve had so many MRIs and scans where they don’t find nothing. But your body remembers.’

She also said that amid her emotional journey, she’s recently had to deal with impulses towards self-harm, explaining the rationale behind it.

She said: ‘Even if I have six brilliant months, all it takes is getting triggered once to feel bad. And when I say I feel bad, I mean I want to cut. 

‘Think about dying. Wondering if I’m ever going to do it. I learned all the ways to pull myself out of it.  

‘You know why it’s not good to cut?’ she said. ‘You know why it’s not good to throw yourself against the wall? You know why it’s not good to self-harm? Because it makes you feel worse.

‘You think you’re going to feel better because you’re showing somebody, “Look, I’m in pain.” It doesn’t help.’  

Gaga insisted she isn’t looking for pity and just wants to tell her story to help others.

She said: ‘I don’t tell this story for my own self-service, because, to be honest, it’s hard to tell. I feel a lot of shame about it. How do I explain to people that I have privilege, I’ve got money, I’ve got power, and I’m miserable? How do you do that?

‘I’m not here to tell my story to you because I want anybody to cry for me. I’m good. But open your heart up for somebody else. Because I’m telling you, I’ve been through it and people need help. So, that’s part of my healing, being able to talk to you.’ 

The New York City native previously opened up about her experience in an interview with Howard Stern in 2014, saying that it inspired her song Swing.

‘The song is about rape; the song is about demoralization,’ Gaga told Stern. ‘The song is about rage and fury and passion and I had a lot of pain that I wanted to release.’

The Bad Romance singer told Stern that she did no speak about the assault at the time it has occurred, as she ‘was so traumatized by it that I just had to keep going and get out of there’.

She added: ‘It happens every day and it’s really scary and it’s sad and you know, it didn’t affect me as much right after as it did about four or five years later. It was so hard.’

She said that she initially ‘wasn’t even willing to admit that anything had even happened,’ as she didn’t ‘want to be 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 … I did that.’      

Meanwhile, in candid interviews with Oprah Winfrey on his new show, Prince Harry revealed he was discouraged from discussing his mental health as a child following the sudden death of his mother, and when he tried to ask his family for help more recently — when Meghan claimed she was feeling suicidal — he was ‘met with total silence’ and neglect. 

He said: ‘I thought my family would help, but every single ask, request, warning, whatever it is, just got met with total silence, total neglect.

‘We spent four years trying to make it work. We did everything that we possibly could to stay there and carry on doing the role and doing the job. But Meghan was struggling.’

Harry said the way Meghan was feeling reminded him of his own mother’s final days.

‘History was repeating itself,’ Harry told Oprah. ‘My mother was chased to her death while she was in a relationship with someone who wasn’t white. And now look what’s happened.

‘It’s incredibly triggering to potentially lose another woman in my life. Like, the list is growing. And it all comes back to the same people, the same business model, the same industry,’ he said.  

The prince discussed his failure to process the grief from the death of his mother; the helplessness he felt to protect her; his dependence on drugs and alcohol to numb the pain; his anxiety and sense of being trapped in the palace; and how therapy helped him ‘break the cycle.’ 

‘For me, therapy has equipped me to be able to take on anything,’ he said.  

When asked if he has any regrets, he says it is not taking a stand earlier in his relationship with Meghan. 

‘Eventually when I made that decision for my family, I was still told, ‘You can’t do this,’ Harry recounted to Oprah. ‘And it’s like, “Well how bad does it have to get until I am allowed to do this?” She [Markle] was going to end her life. It shouldn’t have to get to that.’   

The stand-out feature of the show comes as a 13-year-old Harry is seen watching his mother’s coffin – that of Diana, Princess of Wales – passing him during her funeral in London in 1997. 

Prince Charles can be seen speaking to his heartbroken son as a female voiceover says over dramatic music: ‘Treating people with dignity is the first act’.  

Harry tells Oprah: ‘To make that decision to receive help is not a sign of weakness. In today’s world more than ever, it is a sign of strength.’

The show also had interviews with actress Glenn Close and US talk show queen Oprah herself as well as a feature on a Syrian refugee named Fawzi, described as a hero on the program. 

Along with Winfrey, the Duke of Sussex is an executive producer of The Me You Can’t See, which premiered on Apple TV+ on Friday.