In what came as a shocking revelation for fans, singer-songwriter Demi Lovato opened up in her recently-released documentary about the difficulties she faced and said she had been “raped” when she was a teenager.
Demi also said she had been “sexually assaulted” by her drug dealer in July 2018, on the night she had a drug overdose and almost died.
Until now, people only knew that the singer had experienced a near-fatal drug overdose and had linked it to personal issues that she may have faced back then. However, she has now revealed that she had been sexually assaulted and had not realised it until much later.
“I didn’t just overdose. I was taken advantage of,” the 28-year-old said in her documentary series, Demi Lovato: Dancing With The Devil, which premiered at the South By Southwest (SXSW) Film Festival, according to media reports.
“When they found me, I was naked, blue. I was literally left for dead after he took advantage of me. When I woke up in the hospital, they asked if we had had consensual sex. There was one flash that I had of him on top of me. I saw that flash and I said yes. It wasn’t until a month after the overdose that I realised, ‘You weren’t in any state of mind to make a consensual decision’,” she explained.
In the series, Lovato recounts not just the trauma of that particular night but a previous incident of sexual assault as well.
“When I was a teenager, I was in a very similar situation. I lost my virginity in a rape. 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 said, adding that the person who assaulted her “never got in trouble for it.”
“They never got taken out of the movie they were in. I always kept it quiet because I’ve always had something to say. I don’t know, I’m tired of opening my mouth. Here’s the tea,” she said.