Demi Lovato Reveals She Was Raped at Age 15 in “Dancing with the Devil” Docuseries

Demi Lovato is known to be open about her struggles including her overdose in 2018 but in the new Youtube Original docuseries she’s sharing details she’s never discussed before. She’s previously discussed her mental health struggles and how therapy has “saved” her and now she’s opening up about her traumas.  In the first episode of Dancing with the Devil  – out March 23 – she opened up about when she was raped at 15 years old while working for the Disney Channel. The 28-year-old “Sorry Not Sorry” singer revealed the person didn’t face any consequences and that she had to “see this person all the time” after the rape.

“We were hooking up but I said – hey, this is not going any farther,” she said. “And that didn’t matter to them, they did it anyways. And I internalized it and I told myself it was my fault because I still went in the room with him.”

She shared that the rape led her to self-harm and battle with bulimia as well as her image in the media. At the time she wore a promise ring in her commitment to wait until marriage to have sex and in the aftermath of the rape she felt the weight of that narrative in contrast to her reality.

“So what, I’m supposed to come out to the public after saying I have a promise ring? Six months later, I’m supposed to say, well I had sex, even though it was rape? Some people aren’t going to see it that way.”

But her experience with sexual violence doesn’t end there unfortunately. After her July 2018 hospitalization for a reported opioid overdose she claimed she was sexually assaulted and “left for dead” by her drug dealer.

“I didn’t just overdose. I was taken advantage of,” the singer said. “When they found me, I was naked, blue. I was literally left for dead after he took advantage of me.” She shared that it took her a month after that time to realize what had happened.

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“When I woke up in the hospital, they asked if we had had consensual sex,” she went on. “There was one flash that I had of him on top of me. I saw that flash and said, ‘Yes.’ It wasn’t until a month after the overdose that I realized, ‘You weren’t in any state of mind to make a consensual decision.'”During her hospitalization she suffered three strokes and a heart attack and was legally blind and continues to have issues with her vision.

Considering how powerful and vulnerable this first episode is there’s no doubt the rest of the series will be just as revealing and raw. Dancing with the Devil premieres March 23 on Youtube.