--- title: Lady Gaga Told Howard Stern She Was Raped as a Teen by a Producer description: Gaga said she was assaulted when she was 19 canonical: https://time.com/3616084/lady-gaga-rape/ author: Eliana Dockterman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-12-03T16:21:20.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T08:56:24.364Z og:title: Lady Gaga Told Howard Stern She Was Raped as a Teen by a Producer og:description: Gaga said she was assaulted when she was 19 og:url: https://time.com/3616084/lady-gaga-rape/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe04b354898d0a48/69876c51e53abaea1e4d649b/459852638.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1997 og:image:height: 1123 og:image:alt: Celebrity Sightings In New York City - December 02, 2014 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Lady Gaga Told Howard Stern She Was Raped as a Teen by a Producer twitter:description: Gaga said she was assaulted when she was 19 twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe04b354898d0a48/69876c51e53abaea1e4d649b/459852638.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Lady Gaga Says She Was Sexually Assaulted by a Producer > Sponsored content. 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Worth Your Time is TIME's culture newsletter, published Tuesdays and Saturdays to 40,000 subscribers as of August 2026. #### Who writes TIME's culture recommendations? Culture editor Eliza Berman writes Worth Your Time, drawing on TIME's critics and culture desk. #### Is Worth Your Time free? Yes. It is a free newsletter available at time.com/newsletters.  by [Eliana Dockterman](https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Correspondent Dec 3, 2014 4:21 PM UTC  Singer Lady Gaga leaves the Sirius XM Studios in New York City on Dec. 2, 2014 Singer Lady Gaga leaves the Sirius XM Studios in New York City on Dec. 2, 2014 Ray Tamarra—GC Images  by [Eliana Dockterman](https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/)  ## Eliana Dockterman Correspondent Dec 3, 2014 4:21 PM UTC Lady Gaga claimed in a recent interview that she was sexually assaulted by a producer when she was 19. Last year, Gaga sang “Swine” at South by Southwest, while covered in colored vomit. She told Howard Stern on his morning show Tuesday that the performance was meant to demonstrate that a man “could never, ever degrade me as much as I degrade myself.” The singer went on to say that she had been raped by an older man when she was a “very naive” teenager. The incident made her “a shell of \[her\] former self” and the true gravity didn’t hit her until years later. But she has since sought therapy. Gaga has not publicly spoken about the assault before, and said Tuesday that she didn’t “want to be defined” by the incident. “I’ll be damned if somebody’s gonna say that every creatively intelligent thing that I ever did is all boiled down to one dickhead who did that to me,” she said. Gaga declined to name the producer who allegedly assaulted her, but Kesha’s lawyer is [claiming on Twitter](http://www.mtv.com/news/2014453/lady-gaga-denies-kesha-rape-dr-luke/) that it was Dr. Luke and says he will depose Gaga in Kesha’s ongoing sexual-assault lawsuit against the producer. Gaga’s representatives call the assertion that Dr. Luke was her assailant “ridiculous” and “utterly incomprehensible.” Listen to the whole interview clip here: ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3616084/lady-gaga-rape/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3616084/lady-gaga-rape/"},"headline":"Lady Gaga Says She Was Sexually Assaulted by a Producer","datePublished":"2014-12-03T16:21:20.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T08:56:24.364Z","description":"In an interview with Howard Stern, Gaga spoke publicly for the first time about the incident","url":"https://time.com/3616084/lady-gaga-rape/","keywords":["Living","Sexual Assault","celebrities","Lady Gaga"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe04b354898d0a48/69876c51e53abaea1e4d649b/459852638.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliana Dockterman","jobTitle":"Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/eliana-dockterman/"}],"articleSection":"","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe04b354898d0a48/69876c51e53abaea1e4d649b/459852638.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Celebrity Sightings In New York City - December 02, 2014","caption":"Celebrity Sightings In New York City - December 02, 2014","creditText":"Ray Tamarra—GC Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-living/","name":"Living"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3616084/lady-gaga-rape/","name":"Lady Gaga Says She Was Sexually Assaulted by a Producer"}}]}] ```