Mel C has recalled being sexually assaulted the night before she performed with the Spice Girls for the first time in Istanbul.
The singer bravely opens up in her new autobiography, Who I Am, and spoke about the incident, saying it made her feel ‘violated’.
‘So here we were, the eve of the first ever Spice Girls show,’ she explained.
‘So I treat myself to a massage in the hotel and what happened to me, I kind of buried immediately because there were other things to focus on.
‘I didn’t want to make a fuss but also I didn’t have time to deal with it.’
The Wannabe hitmaker, 48, added that she thought it was important for her to include in the book and ‘finally deal with it and process it’, and that it could be helpful for other people.
‘I felt violated, I felt very vulnerable, I felt embarrassed and then I felt unsure,’ she added on the How To Fail podcast. ‘I do want to talk about it because it has affected me. But I buried it.’
The Spice Girls performed their show Girl Power! Live In Istanbul in 1997, after the release of their first album, Spice, in 1996.
It was followed by the Spiceworld Tour in 1998 after the release of their second album.
Mel has also been open about how global fame with the band affected her.
She revealed that she began to experience health problems in 1994, prior to the band bursting onto the scene, when she was showing off her backflips and a manager told her: ‘I’m surprised you can do backflips with thighs like that’.
While Mel was careful not to divulge too many details about her disordered eating at the time, she admitted to MailOnline that she doesn’t know how she physically coped with an intense training and tour schedule while eating very little after the words left her mortified.
She admitted: ‘It is such a mixed bag of emotions when I look back, because us girls achieved so much, we accomplished our wildest dreams.
‘I never want to look back on that time negatively, but it is important for me to tell the difficult parts of my past.
‘Our culture has changed so much and so many young people are hungry for fame. And I just want them to be prepared. It’s not plain sailing.’
Mel’s recovery began with being prescribed antidepressants but she admitted there wasn’t enough talk about mental health in the Spice Girls’s heyday.
The band formed in 1994, and broke up in 2000, however, they have had various reunions over the years and are still close friends.
Victim Support
Victim Support offers support to survivors of rape and sexual abuse. You can contact them on 0333 300 6389.
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