Aluna Francis has spoken for the first time about being sexually assaulted by someone in the music industry.
She told BBC podcast The Next Episode that the man forced his hands into her underwear, undressed and tried to coerce her into performing oral sex.
“It was like I was in a room with a completely different person,” said the AlunaGeorge singer. “His behaviour went from nought to a hundred.”
She has not disclosed the name of her alleged attacker.
Francis, whose dance duo scored several top 40 singles and were runners-up on the BBC’s Sound of 2013 list, said she had been working on a song with the music professional when the alleged attack took place in a hotel room.
“I was like, ‘All right mate, calm down. Take your hands out of my pants please’,” she said.
Despite her appeals, her alleged attacker’s behaviour escalated.
“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.”
Francis said she had to “wrestle him off” to get away.
“I thought that I was okay and I’m just so not,” she said.
The musician has addressed sexual misconduct previously, in her track Mean What I Mean but has never shared details of the attack, which she did not report to police.
Francis told the BBC podcast that the music business, “is living in the past, an unmonitored, unregulated cesspit of bad behaviour”.
“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.”
Other British musicians have come forward and spoken to The Next Episode about their experiences, including Rebecca Taylor who performs under the name Self Esteem and will be appearing at Glastonbury next week.
