Story By: Jonathan Macias, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
A former contestant on Spanish Big Brother has claimed she was raped on the show and the producers tried to hide it from the public.
Carlota Prado was a contestant on Big Brother Revolution (the 18th programme of the Big Brother franchise in Spain), and says she was raped by another contestant during her participation on the reality show in November 2017.
Prado told Spanish newspaper ‘El Confidencial’ the case was hidden from the public by the programme.
During her time in the house on Big Brother Revolution in 2017, also called Big Brother 18, she met another of the contestants, Jose Maria Lopez, who she started a romantic relationship with.
Prado accuses him of having raped her after a party in the house where they consumed alcohol and she ended up unconscious.
The TV programme informed viewers during a live broadcast that they had expelled Jose Maria Lopez for “intolerable behaviour” and they encouraged her to leave the house temporarily.
She says the producers showed her a 10-minute video the following day in which “it is perfectly clear that he takes advantage of me in the room and that I am unconscious.”.
She regretted the fact the programme showed her the video without warning her about what she was going to see.
”There should have been a person by my side, a psychologist,” she said.
Prado left the show temporarily before returning to it but she says the producers hid the real reason for Lopez’s dismissal from the show from the public.
She said: “I remember that inside the house they wouldn’t let me talk about what had happened, even my fellow contestants were forbidden from talking about it in my absence.”
According to Prado, the reality show reported the case to the Spanish Civil Guard in 2017 but she said she did not press charges at the time because “part of her family was not in Spain and she wanted to talk to them”.
The photos show the moments before Lopez allegedly took her into the bedroom at the party.
The Provincial Court of Madrid is investigating the case and no arrests have been reported.
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