Rita Ora is revealing details about her first relationship as a teenager in her biography Hot Right Now, which details her family’s escape from Kosovo to becoming an international pop star.
Ora was 14 years old at the time of the relationship, which began while she was a student at London’s Sylvia Young Theatre School. Her boyfriend was 12 years older than her at 26 years old.
In an excerpt The Sun published, she wrote, “I was 14 when I started, when I got my first relationship with a guy. I would say (he was) about 26, and you have to remember I hadn’t had a relationship before then at all.”
“I was very new to the whole world of a man and a female,” she added. “It’s strange how, once it starts, you kind of feel you can take over the world.
The excerpt has uncovered an interview Ora did in 2013 on Lifetime TV, where she called the relationship “abusive.” She mused, “It’s child abuse really, isn’t it?”
She also said she doesn’t consider herself a victim of the relationship from 10 years ago, because she willingly participated in it.
“I don’t want to say that I suffered it, because I wanted it,” she said. “I don’t want to say that I was forced to do it. I don’t want people to think I was abused as a kid but I was definitely more mature than I should have been at 14.”
Ora is now dating Blink 182 drummer Travis Barker, who she met last month at a charity event.