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Lady Gaga opens up about her rape ordeal

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Lady Gaga. (Photo: Getty Images/Gallo Images)
Lady Gaga. (Photo: Getty Images/Gallo Images)

Cape Town - Singer Lady Gaga has opened up about how sexual assault she suffered more than a decade ago still affects her today.

The Til' It Happens to You songstress was raped by a music producer when she was 19.

Gaga spoke candidly to Vogue of the trauma she still deals with 13 years later, saying it took her years to even admit she’d been assaulted.

“It was almost like I tried to erase it from my brain,” she told the glossy. “And when it finally came out it was like a big, ugly monster. And you have to face the monster to heal.”

The 32-year-old features on the cover of the magazine’s October issue.

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The six-time Grammy winner first disclosed her rape in an interview with DJ Howard Stern in 2014, People magazine reports.

Two years later during another interview, she revealed she suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) due to the assault.

“For me, with my mental-health issues, half of the battle in the beginning was I felt like I was lying to the world because I was feeling so much pain but nobody knew,” she told Vogue of why she chose to share her struggle with the world.

“So that’s why I came out and said I have PTSD because I don’t want to hide anymore than I already have to.”

But despite making it big in the music industry and finding love again – she’s dating Christian Carino, a 48-year-old talent agent – Gaga is still battling with the scars of her past.

She continues to experience symptoms of her PTSD, explaining it causes her body to go into a spasm.

“I feel stunned. Or stunted.

“You know that feeling when you’re on a roller coaster and you’re just about to go down the really steep slope? That fear and the drop in your stomach? My diaphragm seizes up. Then I have a hard time breathing and my whole body goes into a spasm. And I begin to cry.

“That’s what it feels like for trauma victims every day, and it’s miserable. I always say that trauma has a brain. And it works its way into everything you do.”

In September last year she announced on Twitter she’s suffers from fibromyalgia, a rare, extreme form of nerve pain. Gaga, who was born Stefani Germanotta, believes it was brought on by the trauma.

She was forced to cut her European tour short due to the condition but says people often don’t believe fibromyalgia is real.

“I get so irritated with people who don’t believe fibromyalgia is real. For me, and I think for many others, it’s really a cyclone of anxiety, depression, PTSD, trauma and panic disorder, all of which sends the nervous system into overdrive and then you have nerve pain as a result.

“People need to be more compassionate. Chronic pain is no joke. And it’s every day waking up not knowing how you’re going to feel.”

The same month as her announcement she allowed cameras to follow her to document her suffering and it was aired as a Netflix documentary called Gaga: Five Foot Two.

A year on she tells Vogue she’s in a much better state physically.

“It’s getting better every day.

“Because now I have fantastic doctors who take care of me and are getting me show-ready.”

SOURCES: VOGUE, PEOPLE, THE METRO

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