Lucy Spraggan has recalled how fellow X Factor contestant and pal Rylan Clark “took charge” after she told him she had been raped by a hotel porter.
The singer, 31, said the attack took place in 2012 after a night out celebrating Clark’s birthday at a Mayfair nightclub, which was attended by members of the X Factor production team.
Detailing the rape in her new memoir, Process: Finding My Way Through, the singer – who was 20 at the time – said she fell unconscious and was escorted back to the hotel by a member of the production team, where a porter offered to help get her to her room.
However, he later used a “traceable keycard” to enter the room and attack her, she said.
And now Spraggan recalled how Clark’s actions after coming back from the night out resulted in evidence leading the police to arrest and then convict the man who attacked her.
While speaking on the How To Fail podcast with Elizabeth Day, she recalled: “Later that night, Rylan came back to the hotel from his own party, he’d been drinking all night, and something told him to go and check on me.
“Rylan, sweet Rylan, came to my room and as he came to check on me, he pushed the door, and the door opened. And he realised that the door had been put on the latch, you have those little metal latches in hotels, and that had been put across.
“So, he pushed the door and thought, ‘That’s strange,’ walked up to me, took my pumpkin costume off,” Spraggan continued.
“I wasn’t responsive, so he checked my pulse, made sure I was breathing, and tucked me in, and most importantly, Rylan took the latch off, he moved it and he shut the door.”
After that, the music star stated that now she knows that the next person who let themselves into her room was the hotel porter who raped her.
She believed that the hotel worker had left the latch across the door “because his intention was to come back to my room and to rape me, and that’s what he did”.
Yet, if the BBC broadcaster hadn’t decided to close the door behind him rather than leave the latch as he found it, there would have been no evidence to convict the porter.
She added: “Because Rylan had, whatever it was, knowing to come back and check that I was ok, that I was safe, the next morning I woke up and I went into complete autopilot.
“I just went about the beginning of that day as if nothing had happened, and I knew something was terribly wrong, and I told Rylan.
Dear @lspraggan
— R Y L A N (@Rylan) July 19, 2023
I love you dearly, you are so brave and so loved. Its took me a while to process and revisit all this since the weekend but everyone should know how brave you are and @elizabday done this perfect. I love you. X #Sprylan ❤️ https://t.co/FiCSIrowKa
“I didn’t know what had happened, I just said… I can’t even really remember what I said. And Rylan took charge, he absolutely took charge.
“Later that day when the police had been called, and Rylan had just been this incredible leader – calm, rational leader, who just saved the day – they told me the hotel porter was in custody, and had Rylan not come to shut that door, there would not have been that traceable key card that gave all the evidence to arrest that man.”
In response to Spraggan’s podcast interview, Rylan tweeted in support of his friend, writting: “Dear @lspraggan I love you dearly, you are so brave and so loved.
“It’s took me a while to process and revisit all this since the weekend but everyone should know how brave you are and @elizabday done this perfect. I love you. X #Sprylan”.
