Mel C says she 'buried' trauma of sexual assault before first Spice Girls gig – 'I didn't want to make a fuss' 

Mel C has alleged that she was sexually assaulted before her first-ever Spice Girls concert in Turkey – an incident that left her feeling 'vulnerable, embarrassed and violated.' 

The Spice Girls singer shared the disturbing memory in her upcoming memoir, Who I Am, recalling how the iconic British pop band performed their first-ever full-length show right after she was violated at a hotel in Turkey. 

Appearing on Elizabeth Day's podcast, How to Fail, Melanie Chisholm spoke candidly about the ordeal, which took place while she was receiving a spa treatment. The 

"We were in Istanbul, we did two shows and we had never done a full-length concert before, so obviously we’d rehearsed for weeks ahead,” the 48-year-old, formerly known as Sporty Spice, recalled. "So, here we were on the eve of the first-ever Spice Girls show, so I treat myself to a massage in the hotel." 

Mel C didn't provide details of the assault but admitted that she struggled to recover from it, due to the intense workload of the Spice Girls' early stardom. 

"What happened to me I kind of buried immediately because there were other things to focus on," the English musician said. 

"I didn’t want to make a fuss, but also I didn’t have time to deal with it. Because I didn’t deal with it at the time, I realized that I allowed that to be buried for years and years and years." The revelation comes shortly after Mel C shared her struggles with anorexia and depression whilst in the '90s band, for which she later sought professional treatment. 

By going public with her own experience of sexual assault, she hopes that she can encourage other abuse survivors to speak more openly about it and 'process' it. 

"I think it’s really important for me to say it and to really deal with it and process it and for other people. Terrible things happen all the time and this situation wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

"In a version of sexual assault, it is a mild version but I felt violated, I felt very vulnerable, I felt embarrassed, and then I felt unsure, have I got this right, what’s going on."