Rina Sawayama Reveals She Was Groomed At 17

Rina Sawayama is opening up about a difficult time in her life in a brand new interview.

More details below…

Speaking to the BBC Three and the BBC World Service “In Conversation” program, Sawayama revealed that her ‘Hold The Girl’ album emerged after going to therapy.

“This is the first time I’m talking about this, but essentially, through doing sex therapy – sex and relationship therapy – I realized that really something that I thought was a relationship that I had, when I was 17, was actually I was groomed. Then why that realization happened in my 30s was because I was finally his age,” she said.

That experience led to Sawayama creating the song ‘Your Age’ off of ‘Hold The Girl.’

“I remember distinctly how uncomfortable that made me, but I didn’t put the two and two together. And it was through this very intense form of therapy, which I feel so lucky to be able to have access to, that I was able to come to terms with that, and it completely broke my whole world apart,” Sawayama said.

“It came to light that, that was what was happening in my school, basically, it was a school teacher. I was so badly slut-shamed, that I developed so much shame around my sexuality, and lost completely my sense of self, I detached from my skin like inside, I don’t know how to describe it. But I just felt so afraid of things. And I’d have anxiety attacks,” she continued.

“Seventeen to me is a child, you’re in school, you have no autonomy most of the time, and especially if you’re in a school setting, if a school teacher is coming on to you, that’s an abuse of power. I didn’t realize that until I was his age,” she shared.

The superstar shared that she does not want to revisit the trauma for her third album.