Lady Gaga once again opened up about being raped when she was a teenager and for the first time, uncovered details of the impact of the sexual assault, which she admitted to have changed her life forever.
Last year, Lady Gaga revealed that she was raped at the age of 19 and now the 29-year-old "Born this Way" singer went into details of how she's lived her life after the incident.
Speaking in a TimesTalks panel discussion, Lady Gaga revealed of the trouble she went through as she explained why she recorded "Til It Happens to You," a song for a documentary film focusing on campus rape entitled "The Hunting Ground," according to a report by People Magazine.
"I didn't tell anyone for I think seven years. I didn't know how to think about it," Lady Gaga told a panel of women in New York Thursday. "I didn't know how to accept it. I didn't know how to not blame myself or think it was my fault. It's something that really changed my life. It changed who I was completely."
The singer-turned-actress also revealed that the ordeal did not only affect her emotionally and mentally but changed her physically as well.
"It changed my body," she confessed. "It changed my thoughts.
"When you go through a trauma like that, it doesn't just have the immediate physical ramifications," Lady Gaga told the panel.
"For many people it has almost like trauma, where you re-experience it through the years after it. It can trigger patterns in your body of physical distress."
She continued, "So a lot of people suffer not just emotional and mental pain, but physical pain as a result of being abused, raped or traumatized in some way."
Lady Gaga revealed last year that she was raped by an older man she refused to identify. For the first time, she discussed the appalling experience on Howard Stern's Sirius XM show in Dec. last year.
"I was about 19," Gaga was quoted as saying by USA Today. "I went to Catholic school and then all this crazy stuff happened and I was going, 'Oh is this just the way adults are?' "
The "Poker Face" singer also told Stern that she "went through some horrible things" ever since. However, she also disclosed that time has somehow helped her pull through the trauma it brought.
"I'm able to laugh now because I've gone through a lot of, you know, mental and physical therapy and emotional therapy to heal over the years," she explained.
