Penny Lancaster has revealed she suffered a series of sexual assaults from childhood into her teenage years.
The 54-year-old model – who is married to singer Sir Rod Stewart, 80 – has spoken for the first time about her experiences in her memoir Someone Like Me.
Loose Women star Lancaster, whose book is due out at the end of September, told the Daily Mail how repeated encounters with predatory men left her traumatised.
The publication reports that her memoir ‘starts with her fearing the sound of footsteps’ as when Lancaster was aged only five, a man tried to abduct her in his car as she played in her garden.
Her father later caught him and ‘taught that guy a lesson he’d never forget’, Lancaster’s book adds.
Aged 12, she claims she was assaulted in an underpass by a man who grabbed her from behind as she walked alone to school.
Lancaster alleges she managed to break free, and after police asked her to help identify her attacker, they arrested the wrong man. Consequently, the real perpetrator was never apprehended.
She wrote that her resulting trauma sparked hyperhidrosis, which makes her hands and feet drip with sweat when anxious.
Lancaster further alleged she suffered a ‘terrifying’ sexual assault aged 17, at the start of her modelling career.
She claimed that while journeying to a fundraising event with an unnamed male fashion designer, she was invited into his home and handed a martini.
Lancaster then said her next memory was waking up on a mattress in his bedroom.
‘I had been drugged,’ she wrote. ‘I was lying face down with no underwear on and he was between my legs. I don’t know to this day if I was raped.’
The Daily Mail reports that in her memoir, Lancaster claims the man called her to ask if he could buy her a diamond necklace the following morning.
She said that her memoir allowed her to ‘dissect and break it all down’ when it came to addressing her trauma.
‘You go back to Penelope as a 12-year-old, the same with the five- and 17-year-olds, and try to remember what she was going through, hold her hand,’ Lancaster said.
She was also demeaned on Celebrity MasterChef in 2021 by disgraced former judge Gregg Wallace.
‘I’m not sure that someone like Gregg is even aware of how his behaviour affects people around him; possibly he’s got away with it for too long.
‘And he’s a relatively short man, so, at first glance, not an intimidating character. You’re put on the back foot.’
In November, Lancaster’s husband, Sir Rod, hit out at Wallace, describing him as a ‘tubby, bald-headed bully’ after he humiliated his other half.
Lancaster had no idea the music icon was going to rip into Wallace via social media like he did. The presenter no longer works for the BBC following an investigation into historical allegations of misconduct.
‘I think my husband, when he heard people talking about his disturbing behaviour, he thought needed to say something,’ she added on Loose Women at the time.
Victim Support
Victim Support offers support to survivors of rape and sexual abuse. You can contact them on 0333 300 6389.
