Demi Lovato 'lost virginity in rape' during Disney days, but attacker wasn't 'taken out of the movie'

Editor's Note: This article contains details about rape and drug overdose.

Demi Lovato has bravely opened up about her life experiences in a new YouTube docuseries titled "Dancing With The Devil," which premiered at the SXSW Film Festival on Tuesday. The musician has made a number of startling revelations in the series, including that she twice suffered from traumatic sexual assault, one of which happened when she was working for the Disney channel in the 2000s.

The 28-year-old has previously also spoken about suffering a near-fatal drug overdose in July 2018, which almost killed her and eventually left her with brain damage. However, she revealed in the recent documentary that she was also "taken advantage of" by her drug dealer on that fateful night.

Sirah Mitchell, a friend of Lovato, explained that the dealer gave the singer heroin laced with fentanyl that night, and "ended up getting her really high and leaving her for dead."

Lovato herself confessed about the incident: "When they found me, I was naked, blue. I was literally left for dead after he took advantage of me. 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.'"

However, this was unfortunately not the only assault Lovato suffered in her life. The "Sorry Not Sorry" hitmaker confessed in the documentary that she was "in a very similar situation" back when she was a teenager, and ended up losing her "virginity in a rape." She added that she and the alleged rapist had been "hooking up" at the time but she had made it clear that she wasn't "ready" to lose her virginity. But when it happened, she "internalised it" and told herself it was her fault because she still went in the room with him and 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. 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," she explained.

Lovato further said: "And, you know what, f** it, I'm just gonna say it: my #MeToo story is me telling somebody that someone did this to me, and they never got in trouble for it. They never got taken out of the movie they were in."

To recover from the trauma, Lovato tried to "take control" of the situation and contacted the abuser a month later to do it "her way," but "all it did was make (her) feel worse."

"Both times were textbook trauma re-enactments, and I really beat myself up for years which is why I had a really hard time coming to terms with the fact it was a rape when it happened," she says in another part of the documentary, which will premiere on YouTube on March 23.