Model Penny Lancaster has said she still has “triggers” after surviving multiple sexual assaults.<\/p>\n
The Loose Woman panellist, 54, who is married to Rod Stewart, has written a memoir titled Someone Like Me which documents some of the attacks she endured when she was younger.<\/p>\n
Ahead of its release, Lancaster spoke about the impact the assaults have had on her life which included an attempted abduction when she was five and an attack in an underpass when she was 12.<\/p>\n
Lancaster told Saga Magazine: “To this day I have triggers, when I hear footsteps behind me. I flinch and that makes me quite angry and frustrated.<\/p>\n
“Although it was hard to write about, I can now talk about it as if it was someone else\u2019s experience, when before I couldn\u2019t without crying and becoming a bit of a mess.”<\/p>\n
The model was also sexually assaulted by a fashion designer when she was 17, however, never reported it despite being urged by police.<\/p>\n
She said: “To this day I don\u2019t know if I was raped.<\/p>\n
“He (the officer) said reporting it could still help someone. But I said, \u2018I can\u2019t\u2019.<\/p>\n
“I realised how old the guy must be now. Even if he\u2019s still alive, he wouldn\u2019t be a risk. The only people who\u2019d suffer would be his family and I\u2019d feel that was cruel.”<\/p>\n
Lancaster has since joined the Special Constabulary where she talked down a suicidal man and helped guard the Queen\u2019s coffin.<\/p>\n
She said: “It\u2019s lovely to be known as part of a team, rather than just Rod\u2019s wife. I had to put the work in for them to realise I was taking this seriously but it\u2019s my true calling.<\/p>\n
“The more you do it the more you understand the importance of caring for your community.”<\/p>\n
Lancaster met Rod Stewart in 1999 and married him in 2007 despite not originally being a “fan” of the Maggie May singer.<\/p>\n
She said: “I wasn\u2019t a fan. And I definitely wasn\u2019t thinking of a relationship because I was coming out of a long-term one, which wasn\u2019t easy.<\/p>\n
“Rod was such an unknown entity.”<\/p>\n
Speaking about the night they met, where she went up to the singer to ask for an autograph, she said: “There were a lot of times after that night when I thought, \u2018What the hell am I getting myself into?\u2019. But Rod\u2019s world was a vortex and I was sucked in.”<\/p>\n
Prior to their relationship, Stewart was married to his first wife, actress Alana Stewart, and later to New Zealand model Rachel Hunter and has eight children, two of which, Alastair and Aiden, he shares with Lancaster.<\/p>\n
She also revealed that Stewart originally did not want to have more children, however, eventually changed his mind.<\/p>\n
She said: “Now Rod always says, \u2018I wish I\u2019d said yes (to babies) earlier, because then we could have had more children\u2019. Even five years ago we were talking about adopting, but it ended up not happening. We thought there might be too much of an age gap.”<\/p>\n
Lancaster\u2019s memoir, Someone Like Me, goes on sale on 25 September.<\/p>\n
Source: Press Association<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Model Penny Lancaster has said she still has “triggers” after surviving multiple sexual assaults. The Loose Woman panellist,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":153841,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-153840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153840","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=153840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/153840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/153841"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=153840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=153840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=153840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}