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Lily Allen details assault by record exec

By | Published on Monday 17 September 2018

Lily Allen

Lily Allen has detailed being sexually assaulted by a record label executive in a new interview with The Guardian. The subject is also discussed in her autobiography, ‘My Thoughts Exactly’, which is set for publication later this month.

She explains that the unnamed man – whose name apparently did feature in the original draft of the book, but was removed based on legal advice – initially appeared to help her when she got too drunk at a party. She says that he left her lying on his bed to sleep it off before returning to the party himself. But later that night the same man assaulted her.

“I woke up at 5am because I could feel someone next to me pressing their naked body against my back”, she says. “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”.

She said that she did not report the incident to the police or other colleagues for fear that it would harm her career. She added that she blamed herself for being drunk, and wasn’t sure that a crime had actually been committed. Although she later realised that it had.

Allen adds that even in the wake of #MeToo, the music industry remains “rife with sexual abuse” and that many are still unwilling to acknowledge the scale of the problem.



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