Three women have alleged they were sexually assaulted while filming one of Britain’s most popular shows, claiming the production failed to protect them.
Two women have told the BBC they were raped while filming one of Channel 4’s biggest shows, Married at First Sight UK, while a third woman has described an incident she believes was non-consensual sex. All three claim the show didn’t do enough to protect them, the publication notes.
Promoted as one “bold social experiment”“Married at First Sight UK” – known to many ast “MAFS” – follows single people who agree to “marry” strangers after meeting for the first time at symbolic wedding ceremonies. The marriages have no legal value, but viewers watch the couples go in “honeymoon”then moving in together and trying to build their relationship — all of which was filmed almost daily.
Audiences frequently exceed three million viewers, making the show one of Channel 4’s flagship products.
The three women who spoke to the BBC are making allegations against the men they were paired with on the show and say they decided to speak out because they feel they should have been better protected. One of them said she wants CPL, the company that produces the show, to go out of business “to allow people to be hurt”.
According to the investigation, a woman claims that her husband on the show raped her and threatened her with an acid attack. They now plan to take legal action against CPL. A second woman told both Channel 4 and CPL before the show aired that she had been raped by her husband on the show. However, its episodes were broadcast. A third victim accused her husband on the show of sexual misconduct.
Channel 4 is accused of knowing about some of the allegations before the show aired, and all episodes featuring the women were available on the station’s streaming platform. Channel 4 later announced that it had removed all episodes from both streaming and broadcast platforms, as well as social media channels associated with the show.
“I completely froze with fear”
One of the women, named Lizzie to protect her real identity, said she noticed “red flags” to his partner almost immediately after the start of the show. The BBC also omitted certain details to protect her anonymity. Anyone making a rape allegation has, by law, the right to anonymity.
During “honeymoon”Lizzie says her husband on the show frequently lost his temper in private. “He would just explode. He would go into a very intense rage”she said.
Lizzie says that at first she was too scared to tell anyone. “He told me if I told what happened he would have someone throw acid on me”she stated.
She says that when they were alone, she tried to talk to him about “raising all the problems” in front of the show’s experts, but this one “he threw a tantrum and threatened to leave.”
That night, she says, the assault took place. “I was in our apartment on the couch and he tried to have sex with me. I was saying no, I didn’t want to. But he kept saying, ‘You can’t say no, you’re my wife.’ And he did it anyway.”
Lizzie describes the incident as “penetration sex” and says he stayed with “fingerprints, where he grabbed me and forced me”.
“I was completely frozen with fear and I never thought anything could scare me so much”she recalls. She said that the next morning, right after her on-screen husband left the apartment, she contacted the team. She says she showed them the bruises and told them everything except the alleged sexual assault itself. A member of the team took photos of the bruises, which the BBC saw.
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They claim that Lizzie would not have told CPL about the fact that her partner had told her that “can’t say no” and that the acid remark would have been reported as a passing remark, not a threat.
“I was saying no, no, stop it”
Chloe says that on one occasion, after moving in with her husband from the show, he took her blanket while she was sleeping “and he touched my breasts and buttocks.” “I was saying no, no, stop, because I was asleep”she said, adding that she immediately reported the incident to the welfare team.
CPL lawyers said Chloe told them she did not feel uncomfortable and felt safe, and did not want the security team to discuss the incident with her on-screen husband.
The couple later began having consensual sex, but Chloe says that at one point he told her “not” after he asked if they should have sex. He would have continued anyway, she says.
“He smiled and climbed on top of me, moved my leg… by then I had basically given up and I just wanted to make sure he didn’t get mad when the cameras were on”she said. “I was lying there staring out the window.”
Then he would have realized she wasn’t participating, she says, and asked: “Don’t you want this?”
“I told him: ‘I told you I don’t want to'”she told the BBC, “and he got very angry and told me: ‘You should have screamed. You should have pushed me'”.
Chloe says he then allegedly told her: “You make me feel like a rapist”. Her on-screen husband’s lawyers dispute these claims.
Production, accused of not taking action
The third female, Shona Manderson, appeared in the 2023 season of MAFS UK. Speaking to Panorama, she says she should have received better protection from the CPL after she felt her partner had crossed the line during sex. She was engaged to Bradley Skelly, then a meditation instructor in Grimsby. “Our first kiss was magical”Shona said.
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The couple started having sex. In taped chats with the show’s experts, Bradley was very open about wanting to explore boundaries, although she admitted there were things she knew she wouldn’t do.
They agreed to use the withdrawal method as a form of contraception, says Shona, but she claims that on one occasion her on-screen husband ejaculated inside her without asking her permission. “I was shocked, I didn’t understand, we had decided not to do this”she said.
Shona did not immediately tell anyone what happened. Around the same time, the show’s experts began noticing Bradley’s controlling behaviors, confronting him in front of the other couples. CPL and Channel 4 decided to ax the couple from the show shortly after the incident, amid concerns over the nature of the relationship.
The company’s response
In a statement issued shortly after the article was published by BBC News, Channel 4 said it commissioned an external review into the show’s safeguarding and welfare measures last month, “after serious allegations of misconduct were made”.
Lawyers for CPL, the independent production company that makes the British version of the show, said its system to protect participants is “golden” and industry leader, claiming to have acted appropriately in all of these cases.
