Singer Lily Allen revealed details of the alleged sexual assault she experienced by a “record industry executive” in her memoir, “My Thoughts Exactly.” She had previously made brief mention of the alleged incident and is now expanding on it in her book, set to be released Sept. 20.
Allen accused the man — left unnamed and referred to only as “Record Industry Executive” — took her to his hotel room after she had gotten “smashed” at a Los Angeles party. He then returned to the room after leaving her to “sleep things off.”
“I woke up at 5am because I could feel someone next to me pressing their naked body against my back,” Allen wrote of the events that followed. “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.”
She wrote she “jumped out of the bed,” and upon identifying the person as Record Industry Executive, immediately ran out of the hotel room. After the alleged assault, she recalled feeling guilty for breaking her sobriety and was “paralysed.”
“I felt betrayed. I felt shame. I felt anger. I felt confused,” Allen wrote.
She said she continued working with Record Industry Executive, but after returning to London, she spoke with her lawyer and signed an affidavit stating her remembrance of what happened.
In an interview with The Guardian, she said she was later offered a gig with Radio 1, but turned it down because one of the executive’s artists would be there. She said she was then punished by the station “with no airplay” for her 2017 single “Trigger Bang.”
A representative for Allen declined to give further comment to TheWrap.
Allen wrote in her book that even in the #MeToo and #TimesUp era, sexual abuse is still “rife in the music industry.” She described a culture of drugs and sex, and recalled a time when she was 20 and had a consensual sexual encounter with an older, more powerful man who worked in artists and repertoire (A&R).
“It was consensual, sure. It’s just that he had all the power and I had none,” she said.
Though, she wrote in her book, she believes the industry is open to change.
“The record industry is beginning, I think and hope, to change,” she wrote. “The silence around abuse and harassment is still resounding, but some noise has emerged.”