Lady Gaga Speaks Out About Sexual Assault

Lady Gaga has opened up about her experience with sexual assault.

The 29-year-old "Born This Way" singer spoke on the incident during a New York Times panel talk, according to Vanity Fair.

"I didn't know how to even think about it, accept it, how to not blame myself or think it was my fault," Gaga said. "It was something that really changed my life, it changed who I was completely, it changed my body, it changed my thoughts."

Gaga went seven years without telling anyone about the assault. She mentioned the "physical pain" one is left with after being sexually assaulted.

"When you go through a trauma like that it doesn't just have immediate physical ramifications on you, for many people it has . . . trauma," Gaga said.

"When you re-experience it throughout the years after, it can trigger patterns in your body, physical distress. A lot of people, not only suffer from emotional and mental pain, but physical pain as a result of being abused, raped or traumatised in some type of way."

Before this, Gaga hadn't yet gone in depth about her sexual assault, though she had mentioned briefly in a previous interview in December 2014 with Howard Stern that she was assaulted at 19 by a man 20 years older.

At The New York Times panel talk she also brought up the song "Til It Happens To You," which she co-wrote and sings with Diane Warren, who has also experienced sexual assault. Warren discussed her experience of being abused by a friend's father when she was a child and how she blamed herself at first, just as Gaga had did.

"Because of the way that I dress, and the way that I'm provocative as a person, I thought that I had brought it on myself in some way," Gaga said, "that it was my fault."

The track, which contains lyrics about how it feels to survive sexual assault, was recorded for the campus-rape documentary "The Hunting Ground." Kirby Dick, who wrote and directed the film along with film producer Amy Ziering, also spoke at the event.