The Spice Girls's Melanie Chisholm (better known as Mel C or Sporty Spice) has penned a new memoir, The Sporty One: My Life as a Spice Girl, in which she writes about having been sexually assaulted by a massage therapist in Istanbul, Turkey, on the night before the group's first live performance in the ’90s.

"It happened to me on the night before the first ever Spice Girls live performance. And we'd never done a full-length concert before, so, obviously, we'd rehearsed for weeks ahead — costume fittings, make-up, hair — everything was leading towards the pinnacle of everything I'd ever wanted to do and ever wanted to be," Chisholm, now 48, said when asked about the incident on Tuesday's episode of the How to Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast. "And what drives me is being onstage, being a performer, so here we were the eve of the first ever Spice Girls show, so I treat myself to a massage in the hotel. And what happened to me, I kind of buried immediately, because there was other things to focus on. You know, I didn't want to make a fuss, but also I didn't have time to deal with it. And because I didn't deal with it at the time, I realize that I allowed that to be buried for years and years and years."

The Spice Girls's Melanie Chisholm (better known as Mel C or Sporty Spice) has penned a new memoir, The Sporty One: My Life as a Spice Girl, in which she writes about having been sexually assaulted by a massage therapist in Istanbul, Turkey, on the night before the group's first live performance in the ’90s.

"It happened to me on the night before the first ever Spice Girls live performance. And we'd never done a full-length concert before, so, obviously, we'd rehearsed for weeks ahead — costume fittings, make-up, hair — everything was leading towards the pinnacle of everything I'd ever wanted to do and ever wanted to be," Chisholm, now 48, said when asked about the incident on Tuesday's episode of the How to Fail with Elizabeth Day podcast. "And what drives me is being onstage, being a performer, so here we were the eve of the first ever Spice Girls show, so I treat myself to a massage in the hotel. And what happened to me, I kind of buried immediately, because there was other things to focus on. You know, I didn't want to make a fuss, but also I didn't have time to deal with it. And because I didn't deal with it at the time, I realize that I allowed that to be buried for years and years and years."