Demi Lovato opens up about her traumatic experiences with unwanted advances in her upcoming docuseries Demi Lovato: Dancing With The Devil.
The docuseries premiered on Tuesday (March 16) at the SXSW Film Festival. Reflecting on her July 2018 overdose, Demi says that her drug dealer sexually assaulted her and left her for dead.
“I didn’t just overdose. I was taken advantage of,” the 28-year-old songstress says in the film.
“When they found me, I was naked, blue. I was literally left for dead after he took advantage of me,” she added. “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 realized, ‘You weren’t in any state of mind to make a consensual decision.'”
Demi also flashed back to a similar situation that happened when she was a teenager.
“When I was a teenager, I was in a very similar situation. I lost my virginity in a rape,” she says in the film, adding, “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.”
“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. 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 anyways. And I internalized it, and I told myself it was my fault because I still went in the room with him. I still hooked up with him.”
“I was part of that Disney crowd that publicly said they were waiting until marriage. I didn’t have the romantic first time,” Demi says. “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 – cutting, throwing up, whatever.”
“My bulimia got so bad I started throwing up blood for the first time,” she shares. “I’m coming forward about what happened to me because everyone that that happens to should absolutely speak their voice if they can and feel comfortable.”
She says she did tell someone about it – but the person never got punished for his actions.
“F–k it, I’m just going to say it. My ‘Me Too’ story is me telling somebody that someone did this to me and they never got in trouble for it,” she says. “They never got taken out of the movie they were in. But I’ve just kept it quiet because I’ve always had something to say and it’s like, I don’t know. I’m tired of opening my mouth. So there’s the tea.”
Demi Lovato: Dancing With The Devil premieres on YouTube on March 23.
If you or someone you know has been a victim of sexual abuse, text “STRENGTH” to the Crisis Text Line at 741-741 to be connected to a certified crisis counselor.
