EMILY Atack has spoken about her horror at being sexually harassed by a sleazy colleague who flashed her and forced her to kiss him. The TV star said he hounded her for months before the horrifying incident and she was left sobbing and terrified. Emily, 32, gave him the pseudonym Dave in her 2019 book […]
EMILY Atack has spoken about her horror at being sexually harassed by a sleazy colleague who flashed her and forced her to kiss him.
The TV star said he hounded her for months before the horrifying incident and she was left sobbing and terrified.
Emily, 32, gave him the pseudonym Dave in her 2019 book Are We There Yet? To Indignity . . . and Beyond! and penned: “There was a group of us on set, all around a similar age, talking about sex. I was being vocal in the discussion – I can talk about sex until the cows come home if I’m in an environment where everyone’s comfortable with that.
“Dave was quite a lot older, and he must have heard this conversation.
“Because then he started talking to me about that kind of stuff, but not in a group situation – when it was just the two of us.
“I made it very clear that I wasn’t going to talk to him about that kind of thing, now that the group chat was over.”
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Emily said he tried it a couple more times but when she ignored him he propositioned her for sex.
She continued: “Then one day I was filming a sex scene and Dave was there. Afterwards, I was walking to get some lunch on my own when he came up behind me and put a condom in my pocket and said to me, ‘Let’s go somewhere right now.’
“My heart just went into my throat. Out of a mix of shock and horror, I nervously laughed it off. ‘Don’t be silly,’ I tried. ‘What do you mean? I’m going for lunch.’
“‘Come on, let’s go somewhere,’ he said again, pulling on my hand. I had to really put my foot down and say, ‘Absolutely not. That’s ludicrous.’”
Emily said she managed to get away that time before he approached her one more time when she was drunk at a party, and knowing she was in a relationship.
The star, who previously revealed she receives rape and death threats from men every day, penned: “The night of the wrap party came round and we were all drinking in the hotel.
“I was just having fun, letting my hair down, messing around with the cast I’d got to know really well. We were stumbling around the hotel corridors when we ran out of wine, so I asked if anyone had any left in their room, because we’d all been given a bottle or two.
“One of the group gave me a key and told me there was a mini fridge of booze in their room. I said, ‘Great’, took the key and went to the room. Opened the door, walked over to the fridge, opened it – no booze in there. And all of a sudden I turned round and Dave is standing there, in the room with his d**k out.
“I froze. I remember saying, drunkenly, ‘No,’ but I didn’t have a clue what to do. I was drunk, for one, but not so drunk that I couldn’t realise this was a really f***ing tense situation.
“I asked him to let me out of the room and he said, ‘I’ll only go if you give me something.’
“So then I kissed him. I just snogged him for a few seconds. Felt sick the entire time but I knew that was the only way I was going to get out of the room.
“He let me leave and the next day I cried my eyes out all day. It’s always emotional after wrap parties, and of course there’s also the hangover paranoia. But it was also because of what had happened with that man.”
Emily said that she blamed herself and didn’t take any action against the man despite her sister Martha begging her to.
She added: “(Martha) said, ‘What do we do about this? We need to say something.’ I said we couldn’t. We cannot say anything to anyone ever.
“I just wanted to forget that it had happened. Perhaps that makes me weak, I don’t know. This is the first time I’ve recalled it to anyone other than Martha.
“I’d love to say that with age, courage and experience, if it happened now, I’d kick him in the balls and leg it out of there as fast as I could. But I realise that for any woman (or man) who has found themselves in a situation like this, you just don’t know how you’ll react, or the impact it has after.
“But when you’re drunk, standing in a room with a man who holds more power than you, instinct takes over, to get you the hell out of there. Whatever it takes.
“I’ve read with horror about the stories from women around the world, from brief encounters with men at work to violent stories about something far more sinister. I’ve been amazed by the bravery of the women speaking out and sharing their stories – and I also stand with those who perhaps still aren’t ready to as well.”
Emily also revealed that she was dropped from a movie role after she ignored a creepy text from a film boss.
A man had said a string of “really inappropriate things” to her during one particular shoot, and then started sending her texts.
The comedian decided that enough was enough and gave him the “cold shoulder”, which ended in her losing her part on the project.
The actress wrote: “The shoot ended and, a fortnight later, all over the press were pictures of another actress in my role.
“I never received an explanation about why I’d been dropped; just one minute I’m doing it and I’m all excited to go, and the next thing I know there’s another actress doing it.
“Sometimes stuff like that happens, it just wasn’t meant to be.”
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It also comes after the TV star was forced to call the police after an online stalker threatened to harm her at home.
The I’m A Celebrity favourite has raised awareness of the issue after The Sun men bombard her with penis pictures before breakfast.
