It so sad how issues of sexual harassment and abuses have permeated our societies

Madonna now 55 (looks and perform on stage as if she is still in her late twenties) in a cover story essay for the November issue of Harper’s Bazaar 55 revisits an old trauma some fans may have never known; she was brutally raped at knifepoint on very first night in New York City after arriving as a scrappy unknown from Rochester, Michigan. with enormous dreams of stardom. This alone could have made so many women who had similar dreams or even greater dreams to become hateful and resentful for life!


“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,” writes Madonna, who adds that she “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.”

As Madonna acolytes know, back in 1978, the future megastar dropped out of the University of Michigan, where she had a dance scholarship, to move to the Big Apple.

Arriving in New York, she says, “wasn’t anything I prepared for,” she writes. “Trying to be a professional dancer, paying my rent by posing au naturel for art classes, staring at people staring at me without clothes on. Daring them to think of me as anything but a form they were trying to capture with their pencils and charcoal,” she continues. (Some of those drawings later made their way into Playboy magazine after Madonna became a star.) “I was defiant. Hell-bent on surviving. On making it. But it was hard and it was lonely, and I had to dare myself every day to keep going.”

After several very lean years, she signed a deal with Sire Records in 1982, with her debut single, “Everybody,” coming out that October. The predecessor to Miley Cyrus, Britney Spears, Lady Gaga and many others writes of her first few years of fame: “When you’re 25, it’s a little bit easier to be daring, especially if you are a pop star, because eccentric behavior is expected from you.”

Ten years later — with her Sean Penn divorce, the explicit Sex book and plenty of high-profile romance behind her — the Grammy winner says she grew restless. “At 35, I was divorced and looking for love in all the wrong places. I decided that I needed to be more than a girl with gold teeth and gangster boyfriends. More than a sexual provocateur imploring girls not to go for second-best baby. I began to search for meaning and a real sense of purpose in life. I wanted to be a mother.”

Now a mother of four — biological kids Lourdes and Rocco, and adopted children David and Mercy — she reveals in Harper’s Bazaar that her decision to adopt son David Banda in Malawi was “an eye opening experience” and “a real low point in my life.”

I later dug on information about this legendary act from Wikipedia and this is what i got:

Madonna has sold more than 300 million records worldwide and is recognized as the best-selling female recording artist of all time by Guinness World Records. Time considered her to be one of the "25 Most Powerful Women of the Past Century" for being an influential figure in contemporary music. Madonna is the best-selling female rock artist of the 20th century and the second best selling female artist in the United States, with 64.5 million certified albums. Considered by Forbes and other publications as a cultural icon,[she is often referred by the international press as the "Queen of Pop".

In 2008, Billboard ranked her at number two, behind only The Beatles, on the Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Artists, making her the most successful solo artist in the history of the chart. She was also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the same year. In 2012, she was crowned the "Greatest Woman In Music" by VH1. As of 2013, some sources report that Madonna's net worth has crossed over one billion dollars. Forbes magazine named Madonna the fifth most powerful and the highest earning celebrity of 2013 with net earnings of $125 million between June 2012–13.


“One of the many things I learned from all of this,” she concludes of the ordeal. “If you aren’t willing to fight for what you believe in, then don’t even enter the ring.

http://www.tutubranch.com/2013/10/madonna-recount-rape-memory.html