MANILA, Philippines—International artist Madonna recently revealed that she was 19 years old when she was raped by a man who pretended to be a good Samaritan.
“I needed money for the telephone, the pay phone and then he [the stranger] gave it to me … and he was like ‘well, I just live right across the street, do you [want] to make the phone call from my house?’” Madonna told Howard Stern over SiriusXM.
The pop icon said that it was her “stupid friendliness” that prompted her to speak to the stranger.
“I trusted everyone,” she said, explaining that she was new in New York and that she grew up in Michigan.
Although she did not elaborate on the incident, the Washington Post reported it was in 2013 that Madonna wrote an essay for Harper’s Bazaar mentioning the rape.
“New York wasn’t everything I thought it would be … It did not welcome me with open arms. The first year, I was held up at gunpoint. Raped on the roof of a building I was dragged up to with a knife in my back, and had my apartment broken into three times,” she said then.
Stern asked Madonna if she thought about pressing charges but the singer said, “You have already been violated. Do you wanna talk about it? Do you wanna make it public? No it’s just not worth it. It’s too humiliating.” KS