Melanie “Mel C” Chisholm – aka Sporty Spice – revealed she was sexually assaulted the night before her first Spice Girls performance.
The singer claims in her new autobiography, “Who I Am: My Story,” that the attack took place at a hotel in Istanbul, Turkey, in 1997 when she was 23 years old.
“It happened to me the night before the very first Spice Girls live performance,” Chisholm, now 48, writes in her memoir, according to the Daily Mail.
“We were in Istanbul, we did two shows there and we had never done a full concert before, so obviously we had been rehearsing for weeks, trying on costumes, makeup here,” she continues.
“Everything led to the pinnacle of everything I’ve ever wanted to do and ever be.”
Chisholm says the incident happened after she decided to treat herself to a massage at the hotel on the eve of their first show.
“I was in an environment where you take your clothes off with this professional person,” she writes. “It has touched me.”
The “Wannabe” singer then recalls getting up and walking out of the massage, trying to block out what had just happened.
Chrisholm claims she didn’t talk about it for years, instead “burying” the memory of what allegedly happened.
“What happened to me I immediately buried because there were other things to focus on. I didn’t want to make a fuss, but I also didn’t have time to deal with it,” she recalled in her memoir.
“Because I didn’t deal with it at the time, I realize I’ve had that buried for years and years and years.”
However, the traumatic incident all came back to her in a dream, she says, as she began writing her book.
“I kind of woke up and it was on my mind and it was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I didn’t even think of having that in the book.’ Then of course I had to think, ‘Do I want to tell this?’” she explains. “I just thought, ‘I think it’s really important for me to say it and finally deal with it and process it’ – and for other people.”
She continues, “I suppose in a version of assault it’s a mild version, but I felt violated. I felt very vulnerable. I felt ashamed, and then I felt insecure. ‘Am I right, what’s going on?’”
Earlier, Chisholm spoke to fans about her struggle with depression during the height of her career.
She admitted that the “cruel and heartless” nature of the music industry left her feeling “desperately unhappy” at times.
“The lows of being famous were devastatingly difficult. I was vulnerable and the tabloids were cruel and heartless. It pushed me to the point of illness,” she confessed in a 2020 essay for Britain’s The Guardian.
“Who I Am: My Story” is on the bookshelf Thursday.