TikTok star Lena Mantler: She was raped by an older woman

As teenagers, twins Lisa and Lena Mantler (22) became web stars with their dance clips. They have now gone their separate ways. While Lisa and her husband are looking forward to their first child, Lena has moved to New York. She has now posted an emotional statement to her 21 million followers in which she addresses the constant discussion about her sexuality and reveals that she was raped by a woman when she was young.

“An older woman took advantage of me”

“I’ve never told anyone because I was so ashamed,” she says in the 20-minute video in English, “because there are many who can’t understand German.” She was ashamed “because I should have stood up for myself… but I couldn’t.” She continues: “I should have said something, but I didn’t,” says Lena. “An older woman took advantage of me. I was raped.” She doesn’t want to get pity with this description, but to show that you shouldn’t prejudge someone whose story you don’t know. Because she often wore oversized styles, she was thought to be a lesbian. But now she explains the tragic reason why she resorted to the baggy clothes at the age of 17: It was a protection after the terrible experience.

“I never thought about my sexuality before. I went through a phase where I didn’t wear oversized clothes, but rather more feminine clothes. But then I experienced someone taking advantage of me at a very young age. And that made me do it,” she says in the video, crying. After the rape, she didn’t want to attract anyone by wearing clothes that were too tight: “I tried to hide.”

Lena Mantler has never been in love

The rumors about her sexuality and the pressure to come out bothered her. “I was only 17 and still trying to figure things out myself. But when everyone writes to you: ‘You’re a lesbian’, you eventually start to believe it.” She then carefully considered every word and every post so that people couldn’t interpret anything into it. The rumors also had an impact on her private life: “It was a very hard time for me because many people I grew up with suddenly turned their backs on me.”

In the video, Lena Mantler also says that she has never been in love. Unlike her twin sister, who married musician Jonas Jay in 2023. In June 2024, the 22-year-old announced on her official Instagram channel that she was pregnant. “Family of 3 loading,” wrote Lisa Mantler on a photo showing her with her husband and baby bump.

The twins were adopted at the age of six months. From June 2015, they shared dance videos on the platform Musical.ly (now TikTok), creating a huge fan base. In August 2023, Lisa and Lena Mantler announced their professional separation. “There are boy band breakups, and we have our boy band breakup too. We’ve been doing this together for so long and we sometimes forget that we’re only 21. Through all of our experiences, our interests have developed so differently. There was a time when we looked exactly alike. We may be twins, but we have different talents,” the duo wrote on Instagram at the time. Lena Mantler took over the successful Instagram account with 21 million followers.