Former X Factor contestant Lucy Spraggan has revealed she left the ITV talent show after being raped.
The singer – who had been a favourite to win in 2012 – suddenly quit the show during its live rounds, with programme-makers telling the public her departure was due to “illness”.
But the 31-year-old has now waived her legal right to anonymity, which is granted to all rape victims, to speak out about her ordeal.
Spraggan was 20 years old at the time of the attack, which she said was carried out by a hotel porter following a night out with fellow contestants.
In the aftermath, she was advised to take medication to prevent HIV infection – but it made her so ill she was forced to leave the X Factor, which was won that year by James Arthur.
The singer said she had wanted to go public at the time, but was warned it might affect her future career.
Spraggan later went on to have success in the music industry with two top-10 albums. Her release Join The Club reached seven in the charts in 2013, while Choices peaked at number five in 2021.
But she said she was tired of not being honest with fans and wanted to speak out now because “in order for me to rebuild myself and move on, I needed to tell the truth”.
Detailing the rape in her new memoir, Process: Finding My Way Through, the singer said she had earlier been on a night out in London celebrating fellow contestant Rylan Clark’s 25th birthday at Mayfair nightclub Mahiki.
But, after being given free alcohol, she fell unconscious and was escorted back to her hotel by a member of the production team, where a porter offered to help get her to her room.
Clark then came to her room to check she was OK and make sure the room was locked, Spraggan said.
However, the porter later returned with a keycard to unlock the door and attack her.
She wrote: “I woke up the next day with this sense of sheer dread. 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.”
The production team quickly called the police and an arrest was made within hours.
The hotel staffer later pleaded guilty and was jailed.
‘No one ever asked if I was OK’
Spraggan said she felt let down by programme-makers and accused them of being “unprepared” to deal with what happened.
She received both financial and medical support in the immediate aftermath, but said she was not given any further support after her attacker was convicted.
Writing in her memoir, Spraggan said: “No one ever contacted me to ask if I was OK.
“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.”
She also told the Guardian: “It was inappropriate for anybody – including contestants – to be drunk.
“How can you fulfil your duty of care when free alcohol is involved?”
X Factor creator Simon Cowell, who was absent from 2012 series because he was filming America’s Got Talent in the US, said in a statement: “What happened to Lucy was horrific and heartbreaking.
“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.
“Since we connected, I have had the honour to work with Lucy and I have always supported her wish to tell her story, as well as her efforts to bring about positive change.”
‘We are extremely sorry’
A spokesperson for Fremantle, the British TV company that produced The X Factor for ITV, said: “To our knowledge, the assault was an event without precedent in the UK television industry.
“Whilst 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.
“Whilst we have worked hard to try and protect Lucy’s lifetime right to anonymity, we applaud her strength and bravery now that she has chosen to waive that right.”
Zayn Malik paid tribute to former One Direction bandmate Liam Payne as he kicked off his solo tour.
Payne died last month of multiple traumas and “internal and external haemorrhage” after falling from a third-floor balcony in Buenos Aires, according to a post-mortem.
Images from Leeds’s O2 Academy on Saturday showed Malik – who delayed his Stairway To The Sky tour due to Payne’s funeral on Wednesday – shared a tribute.
A message was displayed with a heart on a large blue screen behind the singer reading: “Liam Payne 1993-2024. Love you bro.”
X
This content is provided by X, which may be using cookies and other technologies.
To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies.
You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable X cookies or to allow those cookies just once.
You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options.
Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to X cookies.
To view this content you can use the button below to allow X cookies for this session only.
Rapper Ye – formerly known as Kanye West – has been accused of sexual assault in a civil lawsuit that alleges he strangled a model on the set of a music video.
Warning: This story contains details that readers may find distressing
The lawsuit alleges the musician shoved his fingers in the claimant’s mouth at the Chelsea Hotel in New York City in 2010, in what it refers to as “pornographic gagging”, Sky News’ US partner network NBC News reported.
The model who brought the case – which was filed on Friday in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York – was a background actor for another musician’s music video that Ye was guest-starring in, NBC said, citing the lawsuit.
She is seeking compensatory and punitive damages against the 47-year-old.
A representative for Ye was approached for comment by NBC News on Saturday.
The New York City Police Department said it took “sexual assault and rape cases extremely seriously, and urges anyone who has been a victim to file a police report so we can perform a comprehensive investigation, and offer support and services to survivors”.
The lawsuit alleges that a few hours into the shoot, the rapper arrived on set, took over control and ordered “female background actors/models, including the claimant, to line up in the hallway”.
The rapper is then believed to have “evaluated their appearances, pointed to two of the women, and then commanded them to follow him”.
The lawsuit adds the claimant, who was said to be wearing “revealing lingerie”, was uncomfortable but went with Ye to a suite which had a sofa and a camera.
When in the room, Ye is said to have ordered the production team to start playing the music, to which he did not know his lyrics and instead rambled, “rawr, rawr, rawr”.
The lawsuit claims: “Defendant West then pulled two chairs near the camera, positioned them across from each other, and instructed the claimant to sit in the chair in front of the camera.”
While stood over the model, the lawsuit clams Ye strangled her with both hands, according to NBC.
It claims he went on to “emulate forced oral sex” with his hands, with the rapper allegedly screaming: “This is art. This is f****** art. I am like Picasso.”
Universal Music Group is also named in the lawsuit as a defendant and is accused of failing to investigate the incident.
The corporation did not immediately respond to a request for comment by NBC.
Jesse S Weinstein, a lawyer representing the claimant, said the woman “displayed great courage to speak out against some of the most powerful men and entities within the entertainment industry”.
Actor James Norton, who stars in a new film telling the story of the world’s first “test-tube baby”, has criticised how “prohibitively expensive” IVF can be in the UK.
In Joy, the star portrays the real-life scientist Bob Edwards, who – along with obstetrician Patrick Steptoe and embryologist Jean Purdy – spent a decade tirelessly working on medical ways to help infertility.
The film charts the 10 years leading up to the birth of Louise Joy Brown, who was dubbed the world’s first test-tube baby, in 1978.
Norton, who is best known for playing Tommy Lee Royce in the BAFTA-winning series Happy Valley, told Sky News he has friends who were IVF babies and other friends who have had their own children thanks to the fertility treatment.
“But I didn’t know about these three scientists and their sacrifice, tenacity and skill,” he said. The star hopes the film will be “a catalyst for conversation” about the treatment and its availability.
“We know for a fact that Jean, Bob and Patrick would not have liked the fact that IVF is now so means based,” he said. “It’s prohibitively expensive for some… and there is a postcode lottery which means that some people are precluded from that opportunity.”
Now, IVF is considered a wonder of modern medicine. More than 12 million people owe their existence today to the treatment Edwards, Steptoe and Purdy worked so hard to devise.
But Joy shows how public backlash in the years leading up to Louise’s birth saw the team vilified – accused of playing God and creating “Frankenstein babies”.
Bill Nighy and Thomasin McKenzie star alongside Norton, with the script written by acclaimed screenwriter Jack Thorne and his wife Rachel Mason.
Advertisement
The couple went through seven rounds of IVF themselves to conceive their son.
While the film is set in the 1970s, the reality is that societal pressures haven’t changed all that much for many going through IVF today – with the costs now both emotional and financial.
“IVF is still seen as a luxury product, as something that some people get access to and others don’t,” said Thorne, speaking about their experiences in the UK.
“Louise was a working-class girl with working-class parents. Working class IVF babies are very, very rare now.”
In the run-up to the US election, Donald Trump saw IVF as a campaigning point – promising his government, or insurance companies, would pay for the treatment for all women should he be elected. He called himself the “father of IVF” at a campaign event – a remark described as “quite bizarre” by Kamala Harris.
Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
0:28
Bill Nighy ‘proud’ of new film on IVF breakthrough
“I don’t think Trump is a blueprint for this,” Norton said. “I don’t know how that fits alongside his questions around pro-choice.”
In the UK, statistics from fertility regulator HEFA show the proportion of IVF cycles paid for by the NHS has dropped from 40% to 27% in the last decade.
“It’s so expensive,” Norton said. “Those who want a child should have that choice… and some people’s lack of access to this incredibly important science actually means that people don’t have the choice.”
Joy is in UK cinemas from 15 November, and on Netflix from 22 November