Sinitta: I live in torment over ‘Aunty’ who abused me as four-year-old
POP STAR Sinitta has revealed how she is haunted by sexual abuse she suffered as a child.
The flamboyant singer and former flame of music mogul Simon Cowell says she has been left ‘fragile and fighting to survive’ after painful flashbacks.
American-born Sinitta says she was subjected to the assaults as a four-year-old by a family friend she knew as ‘Aunty’ and suffered further sexual abuse while at boarding school.
The latest revelations come after the 54-year-old last month alleged she had been sexually abused by six senior music industry figures during her pop career.
‘I’m in a dark place and have a very uncertain future,’ she told the MoS. ‘A lot of very painful flashbacks have left me feeling wobbly. Things I have never discussed have me shaking and tearful when I recall them. I’m not looking for sympathy, but it seems my past is finally catching up with me.’
Sinitta said she had ‘buried’ painful memories until she began revisiting her poverty-stricken childhood for a series of autobiographical videos called Who Put The Sin In Sinitta?
She spent much of her early life with her grandfather in Detroit while her single mother, Miquel Brown, a Canadian actress who recently played executioner Bernadette in the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, was away working.
His house, which she remembers being infested with cockroaches, hosted an assortment of extended family and friends, including an ‘aunt’ who abused her. ‘She would entice me to play House, it was like a sort of mummies and daddies,’ Sinitta recalled.
‘But she would get into bed with me, strip naked and make me massage her body. It was claustrophobic in the dark under the covers, but I was afraid to stop until she would just collapse on top of me.
‘It is only now that I realise it was grooming,’ she says. ‘I was a vulnerable little girl.’
After her mother began to make a success of her acting and singing career abroad, Sinitta – then ten – was lifted out of the hardship she had experienced with relatives and sent to boarding school in Britain.
But there was trouble waiting for her there. She says: ‘I was sexually abused several times by a gang of schoolgirls who said they were fascinated by my black body.’
Her showbusiness career took off after she moved to London and starred as David Essex’s love interest in West End musical Mutiny! She was signed by talent scout Simon Cowell, who masterminded a string of hits for her including So Macho and Toy Boy, boosting his own career in the process.
But she soon learned fame can have a seedy underbelly. ‘When I first met Simon he introduced me to a famous producer who came to my council flat to talk business. I was sitting on the floor at his feet and he gradually slunk down in the chair and without batting an eyelid exposed himself. I couldn’t believe this was happening again.
‘Was it my fault? I deliberately ignored it before making up an excuse to get rid of him. It was vile.’ She was assaulted by industry figures a further five times throughout her career, she says, including once at Cowell’s £10m French mansion.
‘What happened to you in childhood affects you for the rest of your life,’ she says. ‘I realise now my childhood sexual abuse broke a little part of me and has reverberated through my adult life.’
Sinitta says the recent #MeToo campaign encouraged her to speak out. ‘I was shocked by how angry I felt after years of bottling up something I thought I had under control.’
The singer says she is now determined to campaign to help victims of child sexual abuse.
‘I’m in a dark place, shaking and tearful’