Mel C claims she was sexually assaulted the night of her first ever Spice Girls performance.
She made the shocking claims in her new autobiography, “Who I Am: My Story.”
According to the memoir, the assault went down at a hotel in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1997. She was 23.
“It happened to me on the night before the first ever Spice Girls live performance,” she said per the Daily Mail. “We were in Istanbul, we did two shows over there, and we’d never done a full-length concert before, so obviously we’d rehearsed for weeks ahead, costume fittings, make-up here. Everything was leading towards the pinnacle of everything I’d ever wanted to do and ever wanted to be.”
The singer said she decided to treat herself to a massage in the hotel.
“I was in an environment where you take your clothes off with this professional person. It affected me,” she continued.
She said she suppressed the memory but it came back to her in a dream.
“I kind of woke up and it was in my mind and it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I haven’t even thought about having that in the book.’ Then of course I had to think, ‘Do I want to reveal this?'” she explains. “I just thought, ‘I think it’s really important for me to say it and to finally deal with it and process it’ – and for other people.
“I suppose in a version of sexual assault it’s a mild version but I felt violated. I felt very vulnerable. I felt embarrassed, and then I felt unsure. ‘Have I got this right, what’s going on?'”
