The former X Factor contestant Lucy Spraggan has revealed she was raped by a hotel porter during the production of the ITV show in 2012.
In her new memoir, Process: Finding My Way Through, Spraggan details the devastating impact the assault had on the subsequent decade of her life, and how she felt let down by ITV.
She said the rape took place after a night celebrating fellow contestant Rylan Clark’s 25th birthday at the Mayfair nightclub Mahiki, which was attended by X Factor crew.
“It was inappropriate for anybody – including contestants – to be drunk,” she said in an interview with the Guardian. “How can you fulfil your duty of care when free alcohol is involved?”
Spraggan said she passed out and was escorted back to the hotel by a member of the production team, where a hotel porter offered to help get Spraggan to her room. As they left, the porter flipped the security latch on her door to prevent it locking behind them.
Some time later, Clark checked in on an unconscious Spraggan and made sure her door was locked when he left. When the porter later returned to Spraggan’s room in order to attack her, he had to use a traceable keycard.
“I woke up the next day with this sense of sheer dread,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve ever felt that level of confusion since. I knew that I’d been raped, but I could not process that. So I put my clothes on and went into autopilot.”
Though the production team called the police and an arrest was quickly made, Spraggan said she believed they were “unprepared” to deal with what had happened.
And while she received both financial and medical support in the immediate aftermath of the crime, she said, she wasn’t given any support after the trial.
“No one ever contacted me to ask if I was OK,” she wrote in her memoir. “No one called or emailed when the trial was over and he was convicted. No one offered me rehabilitation or ongoing mental health treatment. I was on my own.”
Spraggan was a 20-year-old gigging musician when she was scouted by X Factor producers, and she became the first contestant to perform her own songs and play an instrument. Her audition, a song called Last Night, was the world’s fourth most-watched YouTube video of that year, and she became the UK’s most Googled artist.
She was voted through the first three live shows before leaving the competition – apparently because of illness.
She said in the days after the assault, the side-effects of Pep (a drug that prevents HIV) made her too unwell to consider continuing with the competition.
Although she wanted to make public the reason for her exit from The X Factor, she said various people told her: “You have your whole career ahead of you and you can’t retract this.”
But she said she had since decided that “in order for me to rebuild myself and move on, I needed to tell the truth”.
A spokesperson for Fremantle, the show’s producers, said: “While we believed throughout that we were doing our best to support Lucy in the aftermath of the ordeal, as Lucy thinks we could have done more, we must therefore recognise this. For everything Lucy has suffered, we are extremely sorry.
“Since then, we have done our very best to learn lessons from these events and improve our aftercare processes.”
A spokesperson for ITV said: “The X Factor was produced by Thames [part of Fremantle] and Syco, who were responsible for duty of care towards all of its programme contributors. ITV is committed to having in place suitable and robust processes to protect the mental health and welfare of programme participants, and we have continued to evolve and strengthen our approach.”
Simon Cowell, the creator of The X Factor, said that what happened to Spraggan was “horrific and heartbreaking” ” and that, “when I was given the opportunity to speak to Lucy, I was able to personally tell her how sorry I was about everything she has been through. Although we met under tragic circumstances, a genuine friendship and a mutual respect has developed between us. Lucy is one of the most authentic, talented and brave people I have ever met. I have always supported her wish to tell her story as well as her efforts to bring about positive change.”
• Information and support for anyone affected by rape or sexual abuse issues is available from the following organisations. In the UK, Rape Crisis offers support on 0808 500 2222 in England and Wales, 0808 801 0302 in Scotland, or 0800 0246 991 in Northern Ireland. In the US, Rainn offers support on 800-656-4673. In Australia, support is available at 1800Respect (1800 737 732). Other international helplines can be found at ibiblio.org/rcip/internl.html
