Entertainment
Demi Lovato reveals she lost her virginity ‘during a rape’ aged 15: ‘I told myself it was my fault’
Demi Lovato has made the heartbreaking revelation that she lost her virginity while being raped at the age of 15.
In her upcoming docuseries, Demi Lovato: Dancing With The Devil, the singer opened up about her childhood trauma which included being raped by someone she knew when she was a Disney star, rising to fame in the 2008 movie Camp Rock.
Demi revealed: ‘I lost my virginity in a rape. I called that person back a month later and tried to make it right by being in control, and all it did was just make me feel worse.’
The Heart Attack singer said the horrific incident mirrored her being sexually assaulted by her drug dealer in 2018 when she was in the middle of a drug overdose.
She described the ordeals as ‘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’.
Recalling the childhood incident, Demi said in the documentary: ‘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 anyways.
‘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.’
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Demi explained that it took her years to define the incident as a rape because ‘the Christian, southern girl in me didn’t see it that way because sex was not normalised as a child or in the south’.
She added: 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.’
The 29-year-old also opens up about the 2018 drug overdose which saw her hospitalised and almost die.
‘I didn’t just overdose. I was taken advantage of,’ Demi stated.
The singer then revealed: ‘When they found me, I was naked, blue. I was literally left for dead after he took advantage of me.
‘When I woke up in the hospital, they asked if we had had consensual sex. There was one flash that I had of him on top of me. I saw that flash and I said yes. It wasn’t until a month after the overdose that I realised, “You weren’t in any state of mind to make a consensual decision”.’
Demi Lovato: Dancing With The Devil arrives on YouTube on March 23.
Victim Support
Victim Support offers support to survivors of rape and sexual abuse. You can contact them on 0333 300 6389.
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