Lady Gaga has revealed to US radio host Howard Stern that she was sexually assaulted as a teenager.
Talking about her song 'Swine', the singer revealed that the lyrics are about rape, telling the radio host: "I wrote a song called 'Swine.' The song is about rape. The song is about demoralization. The song is about rage and fury and passion, and I had a lot of pain that I wanted to release."
Lady Gaga
The host then asked the 'Bad Romance' singer: "You keep alluding to...were you raped?"
Stumbling over her answer, Gaga replied: "I don't...I don't want to... Happy times! Let's talk about happy things.
"I went through some horrific things that I'm able to laugh [at] now, because I've gone through a lot of mental and physical therapy and emotional therapy to heal over the years.
"My music's been wonderful for me. But, you know, I was a shell of my former self at one point. I was not myself. To be fair, I was about 19.
"I went to Catholic school and then all this crazy stuff happened, and I was going, 'Oh, is this just the way adults are?'...I was very naïve.
"It happens every day, and it's really scary, and it's sad. It didn't affect me as much right after as it did about four or five years later.
"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."
But despite her ordeal, the singer said that it had made her the strong person she is today.
"I don't want to be defined by it,” she continued. “I'll be damned if somebody's gonna say that every creatively intelligent thing that I ever did is all boiled down to one d--khead who did that to me.
"I'm going to take responsibility for all my pain looking beautiful. All the things that I've made out of my strife, I did that.
"Because it wasn't until I was a little bit older that I went, 'Wow, that was really messed up.'
"You were 20 years older than me. I was a kid. It took me a long time to feel strong about it."