American singer and actress Demi Lovato has recounted how she was raped at 15, leading to the loss of her virginity.
The singer in her new YouTube docuseries Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil, revealed the molestation occurred twice—one as a teenager while working for the Disney Channel in the late 2000s, and the other in 2018 during her fatal overdose by her drug dealer.
“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,” she said.
She added that “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”.
Demi said she called her abuser back a month later and tried to make it right by being in control, but she felt worse instead.
She also recalled the second rape event, she said she was “left for dead” by her drug dealer after he raped her during an overdose.
Lovato called both the times she returned “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”.