Former X Factor contestant Lucy Spraggan has told BBC News that taking part in the show in 2012 felt like being in “an abusive relationship”.
She has revealed the reason she left the ITV show abruptly after week three was because she had been raped, and was not ill, as reported at the time.
The singer-songwriter says the industry needs to change to better protect people taking part in reality TV shows.
Both ITV and Fremantle say they are evolving their duty of care processes.
X Factor was made for ITV by Talkback Thames – part of production company Fremantle – and Simon Cowell’s company Syco.
Simon Cowell has described what happened to Spraggan as “horrific and heartbreaking”.
Spraggan has waived her legal right to anonymity, granted to victims of sexual offences, to speak to the BBC in her first broadcast interview.
In 2012, X Factor was one of the UK’s most-watched TV shows and Spraggan became an overnight sensation when millions watched her audition.
“From that moment on, my life changed forever,” she tells the BBC.
“From the beginning, they kind of make you into a caricature of yourself. It’s almost like there’s a storyline written for you,” she adds.
Spraggan, who was 20 at the time, says the contestants were immediately put under huge pressure.
“From the very first stage that message was reiterated and reiterated and reiterated to the point where that’s all you believe – [that] ‘this is the biggest opportunity of my life,'” she says.
Now 31, she says she has never since experienced a situation where “somebody completely takes the reins of my life”.
“If I had experienced that again, as a normal human being, I would have said that I would have been in an abusive relationship.”
Spraggan details her experiences on the show in her new memoir, Process: Finding My Way Through, including the sexual assault.
It happened at a hotel where she and her fellow contestant – the broadcaster Rylan Clark – had been moved to, away from the others.
They had initially been staying at the luxury Corinthia Hotel in central London, where Spraggan says they were guarded by 24-hour security.
She says the show’s producers told her the hotel had asked the pair to leave because they were “causing too much trouble”. Headlines had branded them “party animals”.
“So Rylan and I always sort of were under the impression that we were removed, because that supported the narrative,” Spraggan says.
The pair were not given additional security at the new hotel, she adds.
