Singer Aluna Francis has spoken about her experience of being sexually assaulted by someone working in the music industry.
Francis, one half of duo AlunaGeorge, told BBC podcast The Next Episode about the incident where a man allegedly tried to coerce her into performing oral sex.
“It was like I was in a room with a completely different person,” she said “His behaviour went from nought to a hundred.”
She said she had been working on a song with the music professional when the alleged incident took place in a hotel room.
“I was like, 'All right mate, calm down. Take your hands out of my pants please',” she said, adding: “The last thing that was happening before I really got myself out of there is that he pinned me down and he'd taken his trousers down.”
She said she had to “wrestle him off” to get away and that after the alleged attack took place, "I thought that I was OK and I'm just so not".
She eventually returned to the studio with the man and spoke to him about his behaviour: “He did all his apologies and talked about how he was so incredibly sorry and [that] this has never happened before,” she said, adding that she did not consider reporting the alleged incident to police.
“You’re dealing with it all the time. Even if it goes up to a high level, you’re still playing out this role of ‘It’s fine’.”
The music industry is "living in the past, an unmonitored, unregulated cesspit of bad behaviour," she continued.
“If a woman wants to stay safe, it's literally down to her to take care of that and navigate choices of whether to take a risk for her career or stay safe and miss out on opportunities.”
