Madonna: I was raped at knifepoint as a young artist in NYC

In a shocking new story for Harper’s Bazaar, Madonna revealed she was raped at knifepoint when she moved to New York City as a young, aspiring singer. Worse yet, that was just one of the horrifying things she experienced as a single girl in the city — which was infamously crime-ridden in the 1980s.

“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,” Madonna wrote in an essay for the November 2013 editor of Harper’s Bazaar. “(I) had my apartment broken into three times. I don’t know why; I had nothing of value after they took my radio the first time.”

The experience came shortly after Madonna dropped out of the University of Michigan and moved to New York to pursue dancing. Even after the trauma, she was “hell-bent on surviving.”

“This wasn’t anything I prepared for in Rochester, Michigan. Trying to be a professional dancer, paying my rent by posing nude for art classes, staring at people staring at me naked. Daring them to think of me as anything but a form they were trying to capture with their pencils and charcoal. I was defiant,” the 55-year-old music legend said.

^ Picture for the photo spread that accompanied Madonna’s essay.

“But it was hard and it was lonely, and I had to dare myself every day to keep going. Sometimes I would play the victim and cry in my shoe box of a bedroom with a window that faced a wall, watching the pigeons shit on my windowsill.”

Within years, she was one of the biggest pop stars in the world. Still, all of the success cannot (and has not) erased those painful memories. Yet, she carried on by seeking inspiration from the strong women who went before her…

“As life goes on (and thank goodness it has), the idea of being daring has become the norm for me. Of course, this is all about perception because asking questions, challenging people’s ideas and belief systems, and defending those who don’t have a voice have become a part of my everyday life. In my book, it is normal.”

Check out the rest of Madonna’s insightful, entertaining essay for Harper’s Bazaar for details on how one of the lowest points in her life came when she adopted two children, how she was her own kind of rebel in high school and more…