Sophie Ellis-bextor: ‘I was raped at 17... I felt so ashamed’
Singer said she felt she did not have a case as in the 1990s rape was linked with acts of aggression
SOPHIE ELLIS-BEXTOR has claimed she was raped by a fellow musician as a teenager. The singer has claimed in her new autobiography that she lost her virginity to an older man when she was 17 without her consent.
Ms Ellis-bextor has recounted in Spinning Plates that she met the 29-year-old man, a guitarist she has given the alias “Jim”, at a gig and went back to his house.
She wrote: “Jim and I started kissing and before I knew it we were on his bed and he took off my knickers. I heard myself saying ‘No’ and ‘I don’t want to’, but it didn’t make any difference.
“He didn’t listen to me and he had sex with me and I felt so ashamed.
“It was how I lost my virginity and I felt stupid.
“I felt grubby, but also unsure about my own feelings as I had no other experience to compare it with.”
Ms Ellis-bextor, now 42, said that she was left confused following the incident as the contemporary public discussion of rape was not about “consent” but rather “something you associated with aggression”.
The singer famous for the single Murder on the Dancefloor said that the culture at the time made her feel she did not have a case, as her ordeal did not fit the tropes of violent sexual assault, but she has since come to have a clearer understanding of consent.
She wrote: “I wasn’t listened to. Of the two people there, one said ‘yes’, the other said ‘no’, and the yes person did it anyway.
“The older I’ve become, the more stark that 29-year-old man ignoring 17-year-old me has seemed.”
The singer said she wanted to reveal the story, the first she wrote for her autobiography, in order to stress the importance of consent and make clear “where the line between right and wrong lies”.
Ms Ellis-bextor, a mother of five, said that she has introduced the concept of consent to her children at an early age.
Playtime is strictly regulated, the singer explained, with any activity immediately coming to an end if one of her children says “no” or “stop”.
‘I wasn’t listened to. Of the two people, one said “yes”, the other said “no”, and the yes person did it anyway’