‘I felt used, dirty, like a prostitute’: After two women claim they were raped on Channel 4’s Married At First Sight, another ‘bride’ tells of her own deeply traumatising experience

As allegations of rape and coercion swirl around the Channel 4 reality show Married At First Sight UK, another female participant has come forward with claims she was effectively ‘prostituted’ by TV producers who, she felt, ‘pushed’ and ‘forced’ her into acts of sexual intimacy.

Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail, the former cast member also said she was deliberately put into dangerous situations with a partner she believed was volatile, and that her stint on the show left her in the ‘lowest place I’ve ever been in my entire life’.

Her claims come in the wake of allegations of rape made by two anonymous cast members on a BBC Panorama investigation into the programme aired earlier this month. A further alleged victim, Shona Manderson, also told the BBC she had an abortion after appearing on the show in 2023.

The latest participant to come forward tells me: ‘Intimacy is very pushed, but you’ve literally just married a stranger. Not only are you having to share a bed with them, which is weird as hell – it’s like getting in bed with a man off the street who you’ve never met in your life, you feel dirty – but then you’re sitting on a sofa, and [the production team] ask, ‘What’s it like in the bedroom, then?’

‘It’s a form of prostitution in my eyes – you’re forced to be intimate.’ Some of the on-set welfare staff were apparently not professionally trained, she claims, but instead were university graduates keen to get a start in TV production. Worse, she says, they were often hard to get hold of or delayed responding even when the cast member may have been in severe distress.

‘I think the welfare staff should be people who are well trained, not just random people who’ve left university and think, ‘I want to work in production one day’, and they start as welfare, because that is what happens,’ she says.

‘They start as runners, so they run to the shop and get you drinks, and if they’re really good, they make them welfare because that’s what happened to one of them when I was there. So, these people aren’t trained in looking after and mentally supporting people. They need to be trained to actually do that.’

When approached by the Daily Mail, Channel 4 denied this is the case and says its welfare team is highly experienced with trained mental health first-aiders.

So traumatic was her time on the show, the former cast member claims, she was afterwards diagnosed with PTSD and anxiety. ‘My mum even said, ‘I will never forget that day you stepped off that train – you weren’t the daughter I sent off to film it.’

‘I’d lost two stone, I was ill, riddled with anxiety, I couldn’t leave the house. I’m still suffering from it. I felt used, kind of dirty. Afterwards, I remember saying to my mum, ‘I feel like a prostitute’.

‘I’ve been sent off to marry a man and share a bed with a man that I don’t know and I thought he was going to be the love of my life and he turned out to treat me like s***.’

Married At First Sight sees singles paired together by a panel of experts and then enter into non-legally binding marriages after meeting for the first time at the altar.

Billed as a ‘social experiment’, the show follows the couples’ every move as they go on a ‘honeymoon’ and then move in together. The anonymous cast member told the Daily Mail she felt the production team were ‘very pushy’ during the six-month matching process before filming for her series even began.

‘I felt like I’d been love-bombed, not by my on-screen husband, but by the whole production hyping him up,’ she said.

‘Before I’d even seen him, they said, ‘If you don’t fancy him, you need to go to Specsavers’.

‘I’m thinking, ‘Freaking hell, I’m walking down the aisle to Prince Charming here, do I look good enough?’ She added: ‘They were so reassuring… when I think back, I was brainwashed.’ While Channel 4 insists welfare check-ins happen at least twice a day on set, as a minimum, and psychological support is also available, the contestant claims that was not the case in her experience.

Cast members were given phones to use to communicate with the welfare teams, and were told they’d be on-call 24/7 both during and after filming.

But the contestant recalled occasions when this support was lacking, even after she and other cast members alerted programme makers to the fact they felt ‘threatened’ by their partners.

‘[The teams] would say, ‘We’ll see you in a bit’, or they would just give you a ring at one in the morning when you’d finally fallen asleep and say, ‘Do you want us to pop over?’.

‘Well, not really. I could have been dead and buried by now. It sounds dramatic but I could – it was seven hours ago I rang you.’

There were multiple instances like this, she said, where her on-screen husband made her feel ‘uncomfortable’ and ‘intimidated’. She said: ‘There were times where I would feel like I didn’t want to be alone in a situation, or disagreement, with him.

‘For instance, if there was a discussion with him that was getting heated, I would always make sure it was in a room full of people.

‘I felt I had to do it in a surrounded place to feel like it wouldn’t escalate.’

She continued: ‘There were various times where it would be picked up in the middle of filming a scene when he was being that way and I would be called out by one of the producers. They wouldn’t ask if I’m all right, they’d say, ‘Go back in and say this or sit there’.

‘I look back now and I think, ‘That was to trigger him’, because it did… I feel like they used my intimidating situations for entertainment purposes, rather than saying, ‘This girl needs to get out of this situation.’

‘There was only one time out of the full three months when they did that and it was at a dinner party where he’d had too much to drink and he got in my ear and said, ‘We’re having words when we get back’ – and they instantly took me out of the dinner and put me in a car and shipped me off to another place.

‘But even then, the next day, they put me back in a room with him, so it made no sense.’

Cast members were told, she said, that both during and after filming, they could have weekly appointments with a psychologist – and more if they needed. But on one occasion, after suffering four panic attacks in a single day, she requested to speak to the psychologist – and was not given an appointment until four days later. ‘I thought, ‘I actually understand now why these incidents happened on Love Island, where people just felt that alone, they took their own lives’,’ she explained. Shooting could be as long as 17 hours a day, the contributor claimed, with sometimes only one or two meals provided.

She said the production team ‘pushed’ cast members to drink alcohol, sometimes as early as 11am, often ‘pumping’ filmed events like dinner parties with drinks. ‘Two meals a day and loads of alcohol, you’re going to be frazzled and you are probably going to be out of character,’ she explained. Before filming, producers allegedly told cast members that they would not have to do ‘voxes’ – a solo interview segment to camera – while under the influence of alcohol, and yet this is exactly what happened. ‘There was a night where me and another cast member were quite tipsy and we were put in a vox and I remember saying, ‘I’m too drunk, I thought I didn’t have to do it’, and they said, ‘Oh, it’ll be fine’. It’s like they knew,’ she told me.

‘It’s a bit sickening, really, when you think about it, isn’t it? Because people take advantage of people when they’re drunk on nights out and it’s classed as a criminal offence.’

Contributors were also often not allowed to go to the toilet when they needed, she said. ‘There were various times the girls and I were on our periods and we’d say, ‘We’re cramping, we need to change our tampons’. One of the girls fainted on set because of it,’ she tells me.

‘They don’t seem to care about how you are, your mental wellbeing, your health. It is like they don’t give a s***. They’re just there to get what they need and put it on the TV, and get the views and make the money.’

Each participant undergoes a comprehensive programme of pre-show vetting – including DBS and police checks, as well as sexual health, pregnancy, mental health and blood tests – but the cast member told us she firmly believed these barely mattered.

‘[The way I saw it] if you fit the slot, you’re going on. If they know that you’re going to be good TV, you’re going on.

‘I could have told them I had a mental breakdown. Or told them I had anxiety and they would have said, ‘Yeah, fine, don’t worry about it’.’

She continued: ‘It’s disgusting. You are literally used as a show monkey, regardless of what you’re going through, what you deal with, how you deal with things.’ The aftercare, the cast member explained, was similarly lacking: ‘Once the show had started airing, I literally got dropped like a sack of s***.

‘I’d reach out, I’d be ringing and crying, saying, ‘Please, this isn’t normal, you told me I wouldn’t get this hate, you told me this wouldn’t happen, you told me you’d prevent this.’

‘I told them I was receiving abusive messages afterwards from my on-screen husband.

‘If they answered the phone, it was, ‘We’ll call you back, we’re busy in the matching process for the next season.’ I was just dismissed.’

And she claims there was a lack of support when she began receiving death threats on social media, too. ‘I was told to hang myself,’ she tells me.

‘My mum and dad were getting messages saying, ‘What’s your address to send you a rope for your daughter to hang herself?’

‘I had a meet and greet arranged but I was told not to go because I’d get acid in my face.’

She added: ‘For months, I couldn’t leave the house. I was petrified. The production team just said, ‘It will die down. Today’s news is tomorrow’s chip paper. It’ll be someone else tomorrow.’ But it wasn’t.’

The recent reports of sexual misconduct on Married At First Sight have seen government ministers, Channel 4 and CPL Productions enter crisis talks.

The production company has sent an internal letter to staffers urging them not to speak out – and Channel 4 has now launched an external independent review into the allegations.

Regarding the recent revelations, the anonymous cast member said: ‘I was shocked but kind of expected it, for someone to finally think enough is enough. And secondly, I felt kind of relieved, that finally for future reference, if it was to go on, there were things that would be prevented and put in place for women.’

There were parts of what the women said in the BBC Panorama documentary which ‘resonated’ with her experience, she said.

The contributor recalled one occasion where she was filming a scene which involved knocking on a fellow couple’s door to chat to them (omitting some details to protect fellow cast members).

‘The production [team] obviously had their earpieces in, which means they can hear everyone talking in their mics,’ she explained. ‘And this cast member, who was my friend, and her husband at the time, were behind the door, and something uncomfortable was happening.

‘I said, ‘Why is she not opening the door to the camera team?’, and they said, ‘Just keep rolling’, kind of thing. And then they stopped, and said, ‘Oh’, and they were listening to something that was happening, which I’m not going to disclose, and that person was saying, ‘No’, and then it took about four more minutes for them to go and stop it.

‘And I remember then going in and she looked like she’d seen a ghost and he acted like nothing had happened.

‘The crew didn’t intervene. They wouldn’t let me in to see if she was OK either.’

Shona Manderson, one of three women who spoke to the BBC Panorama documentary about their time on Married At First Sight, alleged that her on-screen husband engaged in a non-consensual sex act while filming.

She said on one occasion, she and then-partner Bradley Skelly had agreed to the withdrawal method of contraception, but he then ejaculated inside her without her permission.

Manderson said she ‘completely lost her light’ while appearing on the show.

Skelly said he understood his on-screen wife consented that night and categorically denied ‘any allegations of sexual misconduct’ or that he was ‘controlling’.

The Daily Mail approached CPL Productions, the production company for the UK version, for comment, but received no response. A spokesman for Channel 4 said: ‘Married At First Sight UK is produced under some of the most comprehensive and robust welfare protocols in the industry.

‘These include the most thorough background checks available, a code of conduct which clearly sets out behavioural standards, daily contributor check-ins with a specialist welfare team and access to additional support before, during and after filming.

‘The physical and psychological wellbeing of all contributors is of paramount importance throughout the process. All duty-of-care processes are regularly reviewed and, where appropriate, strengthened. In April, Channel 4 was presented with serious allegations of wrongdoing against a small number of past contributors, allegations that we understand those contributors have denied.

‘The channel is mindful of the privacy and continuing duty of care towards all contributors, and cannot comment on or disclose details of those allegations.

‘Related to those allegations, Channel 4 was asked to respond to claims of failures in welfare protocols.

‘Channel 4 believes that when concerns related to contributor welfare were raised through existing welfare and production protocols, prompt and appropriate action was taken, based on the information available at the time. Channel 4 strongly refutes any claim to the contrary.

‘Notwithstanding the actions taken at the time, Channel 4’s recently appointed CEO, Priya Dogra, instructed an external review of contributor welfare on Married At First Sight UK last month.’

After the Panorama programme, Ms Dogra said she wanted to express her ‘sympathy to contributors who have clearly been distressed’ after taking part in the show – but pushed back on claims that Channel 4 had failed in its duty of care. She said: ‘It would be wholly inappropriate for me to comment on what are very serious allegations made against some Married At First Sight UK contributors.

‘Those allegations – which I understand are disputed by the contributors accused – are not something that Channel 4 is in a position to adjudicate on.

‘We are also mindful of our ongoing duty of care to all contributors, and the need to preserve the anonymity and privacy of all involved.’

But none of this cuts ice with the woman I spoke to, the latest cast member to come forward.

‘I thought it was the best thing I ever did. Now, I look back and I think I would pay thousands to take that chapter out of my life.’