Why Lady Gaga kept quiet about her rape for 7 years

It's been over a year since Lady Gaga revealed that she had been raped at the age of 19 and the music video for her song 'Til It Happens To You' did grab her audience's attention for showcasing an extremely commonplace issue: campus rape.

Now, the 29-year-old singer Lady Gaga, who was just nominated for her first Golden Globe award, has revisited a painful moment in her life, opening up about the time she was sexually assaulted as a teenager, News.com.au reported.

During a TimesTalks Q&A for the campus rape documentary 'The Hunting Ground,' the 'Poker Face' songstress said, "I didn?t tell anyone for, I think, seven years."

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

She said that in addition to immediate physical pain and lasting mental and emotional effects, she has physically re-experienced the trauma through the years.

Speaking about the ideas of guilt and self-blame, Gaga said, "After it happened, I'm like, 'But what did I do in my life to bring it upon myself?' Maybe there was some sort of religious guilt attached to it, that I had somehow inspired the violence," she said.

She further said that for her, because of the way that she dresses and the way that she is provocative as a person, she thought she had brought it upon herself in some way, that it was her fault. "I just never even told anyone."