Reneé Rapp candidly recalls ‘incredibly traumatic’ sexual assault experience

‘I still feel like I’m sorting through those feelings,’ singer says

Reneé Rapp has opened up about her “incredibly traumatic” experience with sexual assault.

The 24-year-old singer spoke candidly about her trauma during an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, published on 28 February. Her comments came months after she first appeared on the On Purpose Podcast, where she first revealed that she once went “missing for seven hours” after being “drugged”.

Speaking to THR, Rapp noted that in her hit song, “Snow Angel” – which came out in June –  she sang about sexual assault, as the tune shares more about her story. She acknowledged that she’s still processing her thoughts after that experience, while she’s continued to be more open about it.

“I still feel like I’m sorting through those feelings. I do understand that it was an incredibly traumatic experience that I don’t remember at all. And it feels weird to talk about because I don’t remember it,” she said.

As the “Pretty Girls” singer recalled how her peers allegedly left her at the bar, she acknowledged that she realised that she doesn’t want this group in her life.

“I just recently started to be like: ‘Wait, the people that let this happen to me suck.’ I recently was like: ‘I actually don’t want to follow this person on Instagram anymore because they left me at a club to get drugged,’” she explained.

Although she said she’s not entirely sure what happened that night, Rapp went on to share details about what happened after she woke up.

“God knows what happened to me. And it happened two years ago. I woke up on a bathroom stall, face up in The Beverly Hilton with blood on my pants. And had been left alone at that point for like seven hours,” she said.

In September, The Mean Girls star first recalled how she was “drugged” at a party in Los Angeles during the beginning of 2022. While appearing on Jay Shetty’s podcast, On Purpose, she recalled how she’d “just gone through a breakup,” and had been “hanging out with a new group of people,” who enjoyed going to parties.

She noted that while her family told her that this wasn’t a “good group” for her, she still “really let [her] judgement go when it came to the people that were around” her. She went on to describe how she continued to hang out with these friends, before reflecting on the traumatic experience where they left her alone.

“We were all out, and it was just situation after situation where they were just not trustworthy, and then the next thing you knew, I was face up, laying down in a bathroom stall in a hotel bar, just waking up at 5 in the morning, completely alone,” she said. “I woke up, and I was just so confused, and I had blood on my pants, and I was really just, like, so caught off guard.”

Rapp added that as she still had her purse and phone at the time, she discovered she’d “missed two texts from two people [she] was with at like 10.30 pm the night before”. According to the singer, one of the messages read: “Hey, I guess you left, like we’ll see you when we see you.”

She then specified that she “was dating someone in the group at that time,” so she didn’t attend this event on her own. After recalling how the person she was with was “nowhere to be found” that night, she acknowledged that she’s still unaware of what happened to her.

“I still have no idea what happened, no clue what happened,” she explained. “But I was drugged, and just like missing for seven hours. I stopped being friends with those people and stopped doing as much partying as I was.”

She concluded by explaining that she told her parents and close friends what happened in a “matter of fact way”, and they were “all very concerned”. After emphasising that she couldn’t remember anything that happened, she really “delved into” her feelings a couple months later. One year after that. she wrote her song, “Snow Angel,” about the traumatic experience.

Rape Crisis offers support for those affected by rape and sexual abuse. You can call them on 0808 802 9999 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, and 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland, or visit their website at www.rapecrisis.org.uk. If you are in the US, you can call Rainn on 800-656-HOPE (4673)