Rylan Clark played a key role in finding evidence of Lucy Spraggan's attacker

Lucy Spraggan has revealed that Rylan Clark really helped her out after she was raped, and his actions eventually helped lead to the police finding the man who attacked her.

Spraggan and Rylan are good friends, having met up when they were on The X Factor back in 2012.

Writing in her autobiography - called ‘Process’ – the singer shared how she was sexually assaulted in a hotel by a member of staff.

In that passage, she talked about how she and Rylan had been moved into another hotel that didn’t have any security, before she headed out on a night out to celebrate a fellow contestant’s birthday.

After that, the hotel porter let himself into her room after she had been taken to bed following the Halloween-themed party.

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Discussing the situation on the ‘How to Fail’ podcast with Elizabeth Day, the 31-year-old talked about how the hotel porter and one of the show’s runners took her up to bed, before Rylan felt that he needed to check in on her.

Spraggan said: “Later that night, Rylan came back to the hotel from his own party, he’d been drinking all night, and something told him to go and check on me.”

Admitting that she ‘would not have done the same for him’ and would have ‘just gone to bed’ she explained: “Rylan, sweet Rylan, came to my room and as he came to check on me, he pushed the door, and the door opened.

“And he realised that the door had been put on the latch, you have those little metal latches in hotels, and that had been put across.

“So he pushed the door and thought, ‘That’s strange,’ walked up to me, took my pumpkin costume off.

“I wasn’t responsive so he checked my pulse, made sure I was breathing, and tucked me in, and most importantly, Rylan took the latch off, he moved it and he shut the door.”

Now, she knows that it was the hotel porter who raped her, and believes he had left the door on the latch ‘because his intention was to come back to my room and rape me, and that’s what he did’.

However, because Rylan closed the door behind him, police were eventually able to catch the porter.

“Because Rylan had, whatever it was, knowing to come back and check that I was ok, that I was safe, the next morning I woke up and I went into complete autopilot,” she said.

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“I just went about the beginning of that day as if nothing had happened, and I knew something was terribly wrong, and I told Rylan,

“I didn’t know what had happened, I just said… I can’t even really remember what I said. And Rylan took charge, he absolutely took charge.

“Later that day when the police had been called, and Rylan had just been this incredible leader – calm, rational leader, who just saved the day – they told me the hotel porter was in custody, and had Rylan not come to shut that door, there would not have been that traceable key card that gave all the evidence to arrest that man.”

Lucy had remained anonymous for 10 years because she felt that she had ‘no other choice’ and ‘because [she] was so ashamed for 10 years’.

Responding to the story, Rylan himself commented to say: “‘Dear [Lucy] I love you dearly, you are so brave and so loved.

“It’s took me a while to process and revisit all this since the weekend but everyone should know how brave you are and [podcast host Day] done this perfect.

“I love you.”