Lady Gaga welcomes dozens of survivors of sexual abuse to the stage for her tear-jerking performance of anthem, ”Til It Happens To You’.

Lady Gaga and Diane Warren’s co-penned anthem, ‘Til It Happens To You is a powerful tribute to those battling emotional scars left by their abusers. The track was written for The Hunting Ground, a documentary about campus rape epidemic in the USA and was nominated for Best Original Song at the 2016 ceremony.

Gaga, a victim of sexual assault when she was 19 by a record producer 20 years older than her, told Howard Stern last year that she didn’t tell anyone of the abuse for 7 years.

“I didn’t know how to think about it. I didn’t know how to accept it,” she said. “I didn’t know how not to blame myself, or think it was my fault. It was something that really changed my life. It changed who I was completely.”

“When you go through a trauma like that, it doesn’t just have the immediate physical ramifications on you. For many people it has almost like trauma, where you re-experience it through the years after it, it can trigger patterns in your body of physical distress.”

The singer added that she is speaking out about her abuse in hopes that her fans find the courage to do the same. “I’m here because when I look out onto the sea of beautiful young faces that I get to sing and dance for, I see a lot of people who have secrets that are killing them,” Gaga said at TimesTalks.

“We don’t want you to keep your pain inside and let it rot like an old apple on your counter, you know? It’s like, just get rid of all that trash. Let’s get rid of it together.”

Watch the powerful performance below:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZccLZ3qBYyE