Lily Allen has opened up about being allegedly sexually assaulted by a music industry executive while she was passed out.
In an excerpt from her upcoming memoir My Thoughts Exactly, that was published by the Guardian, Allen writes that after she got "smashed" at a party, the unnamed man took her back to his hotel room so she could sleep it off. She instead woke up to him assaulting her, she wrote.
She recalled: "I woke up at 5 a.m. because I could feel someone next to me pressing their naked body against my back. 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."
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Allen also writes that she consulted a lawyer for advice after the alleged incident and signed an affidavit containing her account of what had happened.
"I expected him not to take advantage of my weakness," she wrote. "I felt betrayed. I felt shame. I felt anger. I felt confused."
Allen doesn't name her attacker after being warned not to by the publisher.
Allen, who released her fourth album No Shame in June, also writes in the memoir that the music industry is "rife" with sexual abuse, claiming it trades in "a potent mix of sex, youth and availability," which creates a structure that "allows and sometimes even endorses toxic behaviour by men towards women."
The singer-songwriter added her voice to the #MeToo movement in June, telling The i Paper that she had been sexually abused by a man in a position of significant power in the music industry.
If you have experienced sexual violence and are in need of crisis support, please call the RAINN Sexual Assault Hotline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673).