If someone makes it clear they don’t want their partner to ejaculate inside them, and they do it anyway, “that can amount to a… sexual violation”, said Baroness Helena Kennedy KC who, as well as chairing the Creative Industries Independent Standards Authority, is a highly experienced criminal lawyer.
She is calling on Channel 4 to bring in external investigators to assess the show’s welfare system. She is critical of the format and said she, personally, does not think MAFS UK should be on air at all.
Women often do not immediately report allegations of rape and sexual assault, she said, “because of the sense of shame that you have, that somehow it’s your fault”.
“It takes a while to come to terms with ‘what was done to me wasn’t right’.”
Prof Helen Wood, a media academic, has carried out a three-year study into reality TV and has spoken to some former MAFS UK cast members as part of it.
She said the highest risk is on shows where people are taken into an “unnatural” environment, where “their contact with the outside world is removed from them.”
“The bubble of the show assumes that there will be, kind of intimacy,” she added, “and that is a dangerous situation.”
Channel 4 said decisions were taken on a “case by case” basis, taking into account the information available at the time.
It said the three women who have spoken to Panorama gave repeated assurances they felt safe, happy and wanted to continue in the process. It also said many cast members have been explicitly or publicly complimentary about the care they received on the show.
