Lucy Spraggan has revealed she left The X Factor after being raped (Picture: Rex/ Getty)
Lucy Spraggan has shared that the real reason she left The X Factor was because she was sexually assaulted during a night out with the cast and crew.
Back in 2012, a then 20-year-old Lucy auditioned for the ninth season of the reality singing series, getting through the audition, boot camp and judge’s house stages before withdrawing from the competition four weeks into the live shows.
At the time the reason for her exit was cited as illness, but now the singer has said she had to walk away after being raped.
Detailing what happened Lucy, now 30, has said the assault happened after a night out celebrating fellow contestant Rylan Clark’s 25th birthday at Mayfair nightclub Mahiki, which was also attended by some of the crew working on the show.
‘It was inappropriate for anybody – including contestants – to be drunk,’ she said.
‘How can you fulfil your duty of care when free alcohol is involved?’
The musician appeared on the reality series in 2012 (Picture: Ken McKay/Thames/REX/Shutterstock)
In her new memoir, Process: Finding My Way Through, Lucy explains how she was escorted back to the hotel by a member of the production team when a hotel porter offered to take her to her room.
But as they left, Lucy explained that he flipped the security latch on her door to prevent it from locking.
Sometime later, Rylan came in to check on an unconscious Lucy and made sure her door was locked when he left.
It meant that when the porter later returned to attack her, he had to use a traceable key-card.
‘I woke up the next day with this sense of sheer dread,’ she explained when speaking to The Guardian.
‘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.’
Fellow contestant Rylan Clark checked in on Lucy before the porter later broke into her room (Picture: Old Boy’s Club / BACKGRID)
The production team called the police and an arrest was swift, however Lucy has said she feels they were ‘unprepared’ to deal with what had happened.
Although she was given financial and medical support in the immediate aftermath, she has said she doesn’t believe she was given enough support following 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.’
Before appearing on The X Factor Lucy had been a gigging musician and was scouted by producers, before becoming the first contestant on the show to perform her own songs and play an instrument.
Lucy has now written a memoir about her career and experience on the show (Picture: David Fisher/Shutterstock)
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.
While illness was given as the reason for her eventual exit from the series, she’s now explained it was a result of the rape.
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 publicly reveal the real reason for her exit, she has said various people said: ‘You have your whole career ahead of you and you can’t retract this.’
However, she’s now said that ‘in order for me to rebuild myself and move on, I needed to tell the truth’.
In a statement to Metro.co.uk, an ITV spokesperson said it had ‘the deepest compassion for Lucy and everything she has endured as a result of this horrific ordeal’.
‘We commend her resilience and bravery.’
It added that the series was produced by Thames and Syco, who were ‘primarily responsible for duty of care towards all of its programme contributors’.
But ITV also said that as commissioning broadcaster, it was ‘committed to having in place suitable and robust oversight procedures, with a view to ensuring that independent producers employ the correct processes to protect the mental health and welfare of participants’.
‘We have evolved and improved these oversight procedures since the events in question and we are encouraged to hear that Thames recognises the importance of continuous review and improvement of their own processes.
‘We continue to evolve our own duty of care processes on programmes we produce to ensure that there are appropriate measures in place to support contributors before, during and after filming.
‘In an event of such a distressing nature, welfare and support towards the victim would always be of the utmost priority.’
In a statement to The Guardian, 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.’
Simon Cowell said he’s supported Lucy’s wish to ‘tell her story’ publicly (Picture: Greg Gayne/NBC via Getty Images)
Simon Cowell, the creator of the series, also told the publication that what happened to Lucy was ‘horrific and heart-breaking’.
‘I have always supported her wish to tell her story, as well as her efforts to bring about positive change,’ he said.
After pleading guilty, the defendant was sentenced to 10 years prison.
Earlier this year Lucy shared that the process of writing her book had been ‘horrendous’ but labelled it ‘wonderful’ to self-examine and reflect on past experiences.
Metro.co.uk has contacted Fremantle Media for comment.
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