Penny Lancaster reveals she suffered series of sexual assaults from childhood into teen years
In traumatic admissions in her upcoming memoir, Penny Lancaster has revealed she suffered a series of sexual assaults from childhood into her teenage years.
Penny Lancaster has revealed she suffered a series of sexual assaults from childhood into her teenage years.
The 54-year-old model – who is married to singer Sir Rod Stewart, 80 – has spoken for the first time about her experiences in her memoir Someone Like Me, including giving details on an attack at 17 in which she believes she was drugged by a fashion designer.
Penny, whose book is due out at the end of September, told the Daily Mail on Saturday (30.08.25) about its contents in an interview to promote the upcoming tome – revealing how repeated encounters with predatory men left her traumatised.
The Mail reports her memoir “starts with her fearing the sound of footsteps” as when Penny was aged only five a man tried to abduct her in his car as she played in her garden.
Her father later caught him and “taught that guy a lesson he’d never forget”, Penny’s book adds.
And aged 12, she was assaulted in an underpass by a man who grabbed her from behind as she walked alone to school.
Penny managed to break free and after police asked her to help identify her attacker, they arrested the wrong man and her attacker was never apprehended.
The Mail said her resulting trauma sparked hyperhidrosis, which makes her hands and feet drip with sweat when anxious.
It added she also suffered a “terrifying” sexual assault aged 17, at the start of her modelling career, which she has kept secret until now.
The Mail said: “En route to a fundraising event with a much older client – a male fashion designer she still won’t name – Lancaster was invited into his home and handed a martini while he ‘collected something’. “Her next memory was waking up on a mattress in his bedroom.”
Penny said: “I had been drugged. I was lying face down with no underwear on and he was between my legs. I don’t know to this day if I was raped.”
The Mail added: “The next morning the predator called Lancaster to ask if he could buy her a diamond necklace. She put the phone down.”
Penny told the Mail revealing the experiences in her book has helped her to “dissect and break it all down”.
She added the actress Kate Silverton explained a technique where victims revisit their traumatised younger selves.
Penny added: “You go back to Penelope as a 12-year-old, the same with the five- and 17-year-olds, and try to remember what she was going through, hold her hand.”
But she added she had not yet tried the therapy.
Penny was also demeaned on Celebrity MasterChef in 2021 by former judge Greg Wallace.
She said: “I’m not sure that someone like Gregg is even aware of how his behaviour affects people around him, possibly he’s got away with it for too long.
“And he’s a relatively short man so, at first glance, not an intimidating character. You’re put on the back foot.”
The BBC has announced Greg, 60, has been sacked after 45 accusations of inappropriate behaviour against him were upheld.
