Demi Lovato Reveals She Was Raped At 15 During Her Disney Days In New YouTube Docuseries
In a new YouTube docuseries “Dancing with the Devil,” Demi Lovato details all that leadup to her near-fatal overdose in 2018 and the aftermath of it all.
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In the four-part documentary that premieres during the virtual South by Southwest festival Tuesday night, Demi Lovato revealed she was raped as a teenager, echoing a later attack during her near-fatal overdose: “lost my virginity in a rape. I called that person back a month later and tried to make it right by being in control, and all it did was just make me feel worse.” The 28-year-old didn’t reveal the identity of the alleged offender, but said she knew the person and had to “see them all the time” after the attack. In fact, Lovato said that she even told someone at the time, but the offender – who was male – “never got taken out of the movie they were in”. Demi l didn’t give specifics over the date or location of the alleged childhood rape. However, she did note that it took place while she was “part of the Disney crowd”.
“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,” Demi explained. “And that didn’t matter to them, they did it anyways. And I internalised it and I told myself it was my fault, because I still went in the room with him, I still hooked up with him.” During the doc, the singer also shared how that experience echoed years later, revealing she was raped by her drug dealer and “left for dead” during her 2018.
“I didn’t just overdose – I also was taken advantage of,” Lovato says. “I’ve had my fair share of sexual trauma throughout childhood, teenage years. And when they found me, I was naked, I was blue. I was literally left for dead after he took advantage of me. When I woke up in the hospital, they asked if I had had consensual sex,” she continues. “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 my overdose when I realized, ‘Hey, you weren’t in any state of mind to make a consensual decision.’ That kind of trauma doesn’t go away overnight. I was literally discarded and abandoned.”
Lovato said both times 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”.
Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil – which premiered at SXSW festival this week – is due to be released on YouTube on 23 March.
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