Lady Gaga yesterday revealed on the Howard Stern show that she was raped at the age of 19 by a man 20 years older than her who is believed to be a reputable music producer. She said that she hasn’t confronted the perpetrator yet but once she ran into him in a shop but was still paralysed with fear at the sight of him.

Despite this though, Gaga refuses to let the ordeal define her and explain her wacky behaviour:

I went through some horrific things. I’m able to laugh now because I’ve gone through a lot of mental and physical therapy to heal over the years, my music has been wonderful for me. I was a shell of my former self at one point.

I was about 19. I went to Catholic school and then all this crazy stuff happened, and I was going, “oh is this just the way adults are?” I was very naive. It didn’t affect me as much right after as it did about four or five years later. I was so traumatised by it that I was like “just keep going”.

I’ll be damned if somebody is going to say that every creatively intelligent thing that I ever did is all boiled down to one d***head that did that to me. I’m going to take responsibility for all my pain looking beautiful. All the things that I’ve made out of my strife, I did that.

That’s a great attitude to take Gaga, fair play.