Lady Gaga says rape at age 19 left her pregnant, led to 'psychotic break'

Lady Gaga says she became pregnant after being raped by a music producer as a teenager and years later suffered a “total psychotic break” as a result of the sexual assault. 

The pop superstar opened up about the sexual assault and the mental toll it has taken on her in the first episode of the Apple TV+ series “The Me You Can’t See.” The show was co-created by Prince Harry and Oprah Winfrey and aims to destigmatize mental illness. 

The “Poker Face” singer said she was 19 when she was raped. 

“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 my music. And they didn't stop — they didn’t stop asking me, and then I just froze, and I just — I don’t even remember,” Lady Gaga said, crying. 

Lady Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Germanotta, refused to name her attacker. 

“I will not say his name,” she said. “I understand this Me Too Movement. I understand that some people feel really comfortable with this. And I do not. I do not ever want to face that person again.

“This system is so abusive,” the 12-time Grammy winner said. “It's so dangerous.”

Lady Gaga said that years after the rape, which she first revealed publicly in a 2014 interview with Howard Stern, she went to the hospital after experiencing chronic pain. 

“First, I felt full-on pain. Then I went numb,” she said. “And then 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 drop me off pregnant on a corner. My parents’ house. Because I was vomiting and sick because I had been being abused. I was locked away in a studio for months.”

Lady Gaga has previously said she was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the rape. She told “The Me You Can’t See” that she has since “learned all the ways to pull myself out of it” but that it took 2½ years — a tumultuous period in which she managed to win an Academy Award for co-writing “Shallow.”

“You can come back from things like that,” she said. “But when it hits you really hard, it can change you. I had a total psychotic break. And for a couple years, I was not the same girl.”

The singer said she would sometimes cut herself, but she told viewers that is not the answer. 

“You know why it's not good to cut?” Lady Gaga 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, ‘Hey, look, I'm in pain.’ It doesn't help. I always tell people, ‘Tell somebody, don't show somebody.’”