Demi Lovato has recounted how she suffered two sexual assaults, with the first resulting to the loss of her virginity at 15.
The singer and actress shared her harrowing experience in her new docuseries, Dancing With The Devil which premiered on Tuesday.
Her assault revelation comes after the trailer revealed that she had suffered brain damage ;after having three strokes and a heart attack as a result of her near-fatal overdose in 2018.
Lovato said she was first raped by as a teenager by someone she knew when she was working with Disney in the late 2000s.
“I lost my virginity in a rape. 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.
“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 anyway. And I internalized it and I told myself it was my fault because I still went in the room with him, I still hooked up with him.
“I was part of that Disney crowd that publicly said they were waiting until marriage. I didn’t have the romantic first time. That was not it for me—that sucked. Then I had to see this person all the time so I stopped eating and coped in other ways.”
She then shared details of her 2018 sexual assault by her drug dealer who “left for dead”.
According Lovato both experiences were “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”.
She added that she’s speaking up now “because everyone that that happens to should absolutely speak their voice; if they can and feel comfortable doing so.”
Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil premieres for free on YouTube on March 23, 2021.