Content warning: this article discusses sexual assault.
In a new interview with Guardian Weekend magazine, Lily Allen has spoken about an incident where she claims she was sexually assaulted by a record industry executive.
Allen is on the cusp of releasing her memoir, My Thoughts Exactly, where she goes into detail about the alleged assault.
After a night of drinking, the man, who Allen wanted to name in the memoir but didn’t at the advice of the publisher’s lawyers, allegedly allowed the 33-year-old ‘Trigger Bang’ singer to sleep in his hotel room.
“I woke up at 5am because I could feel someone next to me pressing their naked body against my back,” she said. “I was naked, too.”
“I could feel someone trying to put their penis inside my vagina and slapping my arse as if I were a stripper in a club. I moved away as quickly as possible and jumped out of the bed, full of alarm … I found my clothes quickly … and ran out of his room and into my own.”
Allen says that she blamed herself initially, due to her intoxication, and that, if she reported it, she’d be labelled as “hysterical” and a “difficult woman.”
She signed an affidavit documenting her recount of what happened. “I wanted it on record that I’d been sexually abused by someone I worked with”.
Moreover, she turned down an event being promoted by Radio 1, because one of this executive’s artists was on the bill and she didn’t want to be around the exec. She also says that this refusal caused Radio 1 to not spin her 2018 album No Shame‘s lead single, ‘Trigger Bang.’
Allen has previously spoken about a run in her mother had with Harvey Weinstein, who last year was accused of multiple counts of sexual assault and is considered the catalyst for the entire wave of silence-breakers.
In other news, Lily Allen just announced that she’s headed back to Australia for a tour in 2019.
