Tears of Rod’s Penny over sex assault ordeal as a teenage model
PENNY Lancaster yesterday told how she was drugged and sexually assaulted by a fashion designer when she was a teenage model.
Sir Rod Stewart’s wife broke down on TV as she recalled how her drink was spiked by a man she thought she could trust.
Her next memory was finding herself ‘face down on a bed with him on top of me’, she told ITV chat show Loose Women.
Miss Lancaster, 46, said she was a virgin and was terrified by the experience, adding: ‘I was too afraid to tell anybody.’
The model said she chose to speak out after thousands of women shared their experiences of sexual assault and harassment on social media, using the MeToo hashtag, in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein sex scandal. Miss Lancaster likened her ordeal to the TV series Liar, in which a rape victim’s drink is spiked.
She did not name her abuser but said he was a fashion designer she worked with when she was starting her modelling career, in her late teens. The designer offered to take her to an industry event and she agreed, thinking it would be an opportunity to get more modelling work, she said.
But he then took her to his apartment as he needed to ‘pick something up’, and poured her a drink.
Miss Lancaster fought back tears as she said: ‘The next thing I knew, I don’t even remember drinking the drink, but I found myself face down on a bed with him on top of me.
‘I couldn’t tell my mum and dad because I thought they would be saying to me, “What on earth were you doing going back to his house?”
‘But he was a client that I’d worked with and he’d promised me I’d meet other people, so I was just naive and I trusted him. And like with the series Liar my drink was drugged and I can’t remember much of what happened. I just know he was on top of me enjoying the experience, but I certainly wasn’t and I don’t really remember much more, and I was too afraid to tell anybody.’
Miss Lancaster was comforted by Loose Women panellists Nadia Sawalha and Andrea McLean as she urged young victims of sexual assault to tell their parents and the authorities.
She said: ‘I had never had sex at that point, so it was a frightening thing. They [young victims] have to know they won’t be told off, it’s not their fault, they’re not guilty – the other person is – and they need to be brave enough to tell the authorities. You end up burying it, you know, and you try to pretend it never happened.’
Viewers of Loose Women praised Miss Lancaster on Twitter for her courage in speaking publicly about her ordeal.
On the show, Miss McLean also revealed she had been a victim when she was starting out in her career.
She said she was groped by a senior colleague while bending over to put something in a drawer when she was in her 20s. The Scottish TV presenter, 48, said she slapped the man across the face after the incident.
Meanwhile Miss Lancaster has previously revealed she was sexually assaulted when she was 12 years old by a man who grabbed her in an underpass as she walked to school.
Speaking in 2015, also on Loose Women, she said: ‘I was attacked under a subway. I managed to fight this man off because I was tall and I was strong, but he had pulled my skirt up and wrestled me.’
Miss Lancaster, who grew up in Essex, said the man fled and was never caught, adding: ‘There are a lot of evil men who prey on people.’
The 6ft 1in star trained as a dancer as a child but when she became too
‘I was too afraid to tell anybody’
tall to pursue it as a career she became a model. In 2002, when she was dating Sir Rod, she was signed as the face of lingerie giant Ultimo, but after two years was replaced with the rocker’s ex-wife Rachel Hunter.
Miss Lancaster and Sir Rod married in 2007 and have two children together. A spokesman for the model said she did not want to give further details about the sexual assault. Meanwhile the fallout from the Weinstein scandal has continued, with the British Film Institute withdrawing an honour it gave the disgraced producer in 2002.
The institute said it was revoking Weinstein’s BFI Fellowship – which are awarded to recognise ‘outstanding contributions to film and TV’ – due to the numerous allegations of sexual assault, harassment and rape he is facing.
The BFI said: ‘The serious and widespread allegations about Har- vey Weinstein’s appalling conduct are in direct opposition to the BFI’s values. We wholeheartedly support those brave enough to speak out. The film industry needs more women represented on every level, on and off screen.’
It added that it is ‘ acting urgently’ to develop ‘a new set of principles to address bullying and harassment’. Weinstein, who denies wrongdoing, had already had his membership suspended from the film academies behind the Baftas and the Oscars.
Actor Channing Tatum has also stopped working on a film he was making with Weinstein’s firm.