05/10/2026
Ten years ago, an anti-r**e anthem made history. "Til It Happens To You," written by Lady Gaga and Diane Warren, became the first song ever to earn Grammy, Emmy, and Oscar nominations in the same awards year. Written for the 2015 film The Hunting Ground, a documentary about r**e and the response to r**e on college campuses, the song helped force the subject of campus sexual assault into the national spotlight. With the repeated chorus of “Til it happens to you / you don’t know how it feels," the heart-wrenching track and the emotionally moving, unsettling video follow the experience of several young survivors of sexual assault. "I hope that this PSA, with its raw and truthful portrayals," said director Catherine Hardwicke, "will send a clear message that we need to support these courageous survivors and end this epidemic plaguing our college campuses."
The filmmakers, Kirby Dick and Amy Ziering, had sought out Lady Gaga in part because of her own history: she had revealed in 2014 that she was r**ed as a teenager. The recording, Warren said, was "very emotional for [Lady Gaga]. She couldn't even talk through it at times." When Gaga released the video, she wrote to survivors: "We hope u feel our love & solidarity through the song & perhaps find some peace in knowing u r not alone through this film." At the 2016 Academy Awards, she performed the song joined onstage by 50 sexual-assault survivors, many with words like "survivor" and "not your fault" written on their arms -- a moment, introduced by then-Vice President Joe Biden, that became one of the most indelible of the night.
A decade on, the epidemic Hardwicke described has not relented. The most recent national data finds that roughly 1 in 4 undergraduate women experience sexual assault during college; the R**e, Abuse & In**st National Network estimates that about 4 in 5 student survivors never report what happened to them. And the campus at the center of the latest reckoning -- Cornell University, where seven students are now accused in a lawsuit of drugging and assaulting a classmate -- found in its own 2025 survey that more than 1 in 3 undergraduate women had experienced a sexual assault there, up from 23 percent just two years earlier.
"Til It Happens To You" was meant to not only galvanize action in addressing this crisis in violence against women, but also give a measure of peace to survivors everywhere. On the release of the video, Lady Gaga tweeted “We hope u feel our love & solidarity through the song & perhaps find some peace in knowing u r not alone through this film.”
Ten years later, with the statistics no less grim and a new generation of students demanding to be believed, the song remains -- tragically, infuriatingly -- as necessary as the day it was written.
--> To watch "Til It Happens To You," visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmWBrN7QV6Y
--> If you or someone you know has been affected by sexual assault, confidential support is available any time through the National Sexual Assault Hotline, operated by the R**e, Abuse & In**st National Network (RAINN), at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673) or online at https://www.rainn.org
If you know a teen girl struggling after sexual abuse or trauma, “The Sexual Trauma Workbook for Teen Girls: A Guide to Recovery from Sexual Assault and Abuse” may help at https://www.amightygirl.com/sexual-trauma-workbook-girls
For a potentially life-saving book for older teens and adults about the early warning signs of abusive relationships, myths about abusive personalities, and how to get help, we highly recommend "Why Does He Do That?: Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men" at https://www.amightygirl.com/why-does-he-do-that
To teach younger children -- girls and boys alike -- about asserting their own boundaries and respecting the boundaries of others, we highly recommend "Let's Talk About Body Boundaries, Consent, and Respect" for ages 4 to 7 (https://www.amightygirl.com/body-boundaries) and "Consent (for Kids!)" for ages 6 to 10 (https://www.amightygirl.com/consent-for-kids)
If you’re a parent concerned that your daughter may be in an unhealthy relationship, check out the books “But I Love Him: Protecting Your Teen Daughter from Controlling, Abusive Relationships” (https://www.amightygirl.com/but-i-love-him) and “Saving Beauty From The Beast: How to Protect Your Daughter from an Unhealthy Relationship” (https://www.amightygirl.com/saving-beauty-from-the-beast)
