Lady Gaga Opens Up About Aunt’s Sexual Assault: ‘It Tormented Her Emotionally’

By Brent Furdyk. Published: 24 Jan 2016 3:33 PM

Lady Gaga became emotional at last night’s Producers Guild Of America Awards, sitting behind a piano to accompany herself on a performance of her Oscar-nominated song “Til It Happens To You.”;

As PEOPLE reports, Mother Monster explained the personal significance of the song by relating how the life of her late aunt, Joanne Germanotta, was permanently scarred by sexual assault.

“It’s not only an important issue to me, but it’s an important issue to my family because when my father’s sister was in college, she was sexually assaulted,”; Gaga told the audience. “Then, it tormented her so emotionally that it caused the lupus that she had to get so bad that she died.”;

She continued: “My father was 16, and it affected my family really tremendously my whole life. That’s one of the centerpieces of our family. So this song means so much to me and so much to my parents.”;