Demi Lovato says she was raped as a teenager working on Disney Channel

Singer made claims in new docuseries Dancing with the Devil

Demi Lovato has said she was raped as a teenager while working for the Disney Channel in the late 2000s.

The singer, who revealed the attack in her new YouTube docuseries Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil, did not say who the offender was.

“I lost my virginity in a rape,” she said. “I called that person back a month later and tried to make it right by being in control, and all it did was just make me feel worse.”

She also said she was “left for dead” by her drug dealer after he raped her during an overdose, and that she saw him during a one-time relapse after a stay in a treatment facility in an effort to assert control.

Lovato called both the times she returned “textbook trauma re-enactments, and I really beat myself up for years, which is also why I had a really hard time coming to terms with the fact that it was a rape when it happened”.

Lovato said the first attack happened while she was “a part of that Disney crowd that publicly said they were waiting till marriage”, referring to the purity rings worn in the late 2000s by young teenage Disney stars including Nick and Joe Jonas, Miley Cyrus and Selena Gomez.

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She added: “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.”

The Independent has contacted Disney for comment.

If you’ve been raped or sexually assaulted, you can contact your nearest Rape Crisis organisation for specialist, independent and confidential support: www.rapecrisis.org.uk.