The public shocked by Madonna’s ‘rape story’

NOVEMBER 9, 2013 BY GBENRO ADEOYE

Madonna was the top earner on the recent Celebrity 100 list, raking in $125m between June 2012 and June 2013, but the singer shocked the public in a recent article where she detailed how she was raped at knifepoint.

The Michigan-born singer moved to New York in 1978. And in an article for Harper’s Bazaar she wrote: “New York wasn’t everything I thought it would be. It did not welcome me with open arms.”

She added: “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. I don’t know why; I had nothing of value after they took my radio the first time.”

Madonna, who had just turned 20 at the time of the attack, wrote that she found New York a daunting place.

“I felt like a warrior plunging my way through the crowds to survive,” she said, telling how she posed nude for art classes to pay her rent while trying to become a professional dancer.”

She also wrote about her conversion to the Kabbalah faith, writing “what the teacher was saying blew my mind.”

“I began to search for a meaning and a real sense of purpose in life. I wanted to be a mother, but I realised that just because I was a freedom fighter didn’t mean I was qualified to raise a child. I decided I needed to have a spiritual life. That’s when I discovered Kabbalah,” she said.

She said that she was surprised by the public response to her new-found faith.

“Now, you would think that studying the mystical interpretation of the Old Teastament and trying to understand the secrets of the universe was a harmless thing to do. I wasn’t hurting anybody. Just going to class, taking notes in my spiral notebook, contemplating my future. I was actually trying to become a better person. For some reason, that made people nervous,” she said.

She added that she had begun studying the Koran, believing it was important to study all the holy books.

The 55-year-old also said that she was taken aback by the controversy that followed her adoption of two children from Malawi, calling the outrage “a real low point in my life.”

She wrote, “Trying to save a child’s life was not something I thought I would be punished for. I decided that I had an embarrassment of riches and that there were too many children in the world without parents or families to love them.

“I applied to an international adoption agency and went through all the bureaucracy, testing, and waiting that everyone else goes through when they adopt.

“As fate would have it, in the middle of this process a woman reached out to me from a small country in Africa called Malawi, and told me about the millions of children orphaned by Aids.”

Madonna currently lives in New York with her four children – Lourdes, 16, whose father is her former personal trainer, Carlos Leon; Rocco, 13, her son from her marriage to Guy Ritchie, and her two adopted children David Banda, eight, and Mercy James, seven.

The Material Girl lives on

Material girl Madonna is one of the biggest stars of her generation, and officially the most successful female solo artist. By the way, ‘Material Girl’ was a song performed by Madonna in 1984, which became a hit.

Born in Bay City, Michigan in 1958, pop music singer Madonna Louise Veronica Ciccone’s parents’ strict observation of the Catholic faith played a crucial role in her childhood which later became the subject of her controversial works. The loss of her mother at the age of five made her determined to make her voice heard, and eventually she rebelled against her traditional upbringing and rejected her religious background.

A disciplined and scholarship winner dancer, Madonna dropped out of college and moved to New York to further her dance skills. She did various odd jobs for her survival, and gradually fell in love with the combination of dance and music and went on to form several different bands of her own. Her first single ‘Everybody’ became a club hit and she used this success as leverage, and went on to record her full length album, ‘Madonna’ in 1983.

Madonna’s distinct sense of fashion, lace lingerie, fishnet stockings and large crucifix necklaces made a statement among the girls all over the country, and she became a sensation on the male dominated music scene of the 80s. Madonna’s life became a whirlwind of activity; she acted in movies, continued to deliver more hit albums and married actor Sean Penn. In spite of her scandalous behaviour and performances exploring religious symbolism and sexual themes, she became more popular than ever.

Madonna has sold more than 300 million records worldwide and is recognised 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.

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 $125m between June 2012 and June 2013.

Listed as world’s wealthiest female musician by Forbes, Madonna lived up to her name and proved her versatility as a star in both music and films. There is nothing this woman can’t do; she’s an author of adult and child books, a self-marketing genius, a philanthropist and one of the most diverse music stars with a sexiness that extends way beyond her looks.

After originally finding fame in the ‘80s with hits like Papa Don’t Preach and True Blue, Madonna has gone on to have hits across four decades, establishing herself as one of the biggest pop icons of all time. She is still releasing music and performing, and wowed with an energetic performance at the 2012 Super Bowl.

But Madonna has not been lucky with relationships. Her marriage to actor, Penn lasted just four years while the latter one to British film director, Guy Rithcie, lasted eight. Following her last divorce, Rithcie got the couple’s 1,200 acre Ashcombe House, worth $16.1m while Madonna got to keep the couple’s £7million townhouse in Marylebone in central London. Rithcie also received $16.1m from Madonna as divorce settlement.

Madonna also has a four story Georgian-style townhouse in New York, which was reportedly bought for a whopping $40m. The Material girl owns a prestige Audi A8, a Cooper S and a Maybach 57.

•Sources: www.telegraph.co.uk; www.mirror.co.uk; www.bornrich.com; www.forbes.com; en.wikipedia.org