Demi Lovato was raped as a teenager.
Demi Lovato
The 28-year-old singer had been "hooking up" with a guy but didn't want to have sex with him because she was still a virgin, and after he forced himself on her, she blamed herself and carried on seeing him afterwards.
She said: "I 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.
"We were hooking up, but I said, 'Hey, this is not going any further. 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.
"I internalised it, I told myself it was my fault because I still went in the room with him. I still hooked up with him."
And the 'Camp Rock' star revealed the traumatic incident sparked her self-harm and eating disorder.
She added: "Here was the thing. I was part of that Disney crowd that publicly said they were waiting till marriage. ... Then I had to see that person all the time, and so I stopped eating and coped in other ways — cutting, throwing up, whatever.
"My bulimia got so bad that I started throwing up blood for the first time."
In her new documentary, ‘Dancing with the Devil’, Demi alleged she was sexually assaulted by her drug dealer and she revealed she called him when she returned home from an "intensive trauma retreat" in a bid to take back control - but only ended up feeling worse.
She said: "I wanted to rewrite his choice of violating me. I wanted it now to be my choice, and he also had something that I wanted, which were drugs.
"I called him back and said, 'No, I'm gonna f*** you.’ It didn’t fix anything. It didn’t take anything away. It made me feel worse. That, for some reason, was my way of taking the power back.
"All it did was bring me back to my knees, begging God for help. ... I ended up getting high.
"I thought, how did I pick up the same drugs that put me in the hospital? I was, like, mortified at my decisions."
The 'It’s OK Not To Be OK’ hitmaker was scared to speak out about what happened to her and admitted she was unsure whether she would be believed.
She said: "Honestly, ever since I watched Rihanna and her pictures get leaked after the Chris Brown incident, I was very uncomfortable with even more of my story playing out in the press and also people maybe not believe me."
Tagged in Demi Lovato