I was raped within my teenage days

US singer Demi Lovato revealed she was raped as a virgin during her teenage years as a Disney Channel celebrity and pop star, in a tell-all documentary that opened the web South By Southwest event Tuesday. Demi Lovato: Dance with the Devil, a YouTube Originals series, centers around Lovato's notorious 2018 overdose that caused her human brain harm and partial blindness, and her ongoing battles with addiction.

The four episodes, presented as the opening night film of a SXSW forced online by the pandemic, also included new information on sexual assaults suffered by Lovato, incorporating an attack on the night of her overdose. "I know what I'm going to say will shock people too. But when I was a teenager I was in an exceedingly similar situation - I dropped my virginity in a rape," says Lovato.

"We were starting up but I said, 'Hey, this is not going any further. I'm a virgin and I don't want to reduce it in this manner," she recounts. "And that didn't matter to them - they achieved it anyways." Lovato, nowadays 28, does not brand her attacker, but says the rape happened when 'I was part of this Disney crowd,' and that she 'experienced to discover this person all of the time' following assault.