Rylan Clark-Neal was hit by criticism after he stood in for regular host Phillip Schofield on yesterday (Wednesday 16)’s This Morning.
During the ITV show, Rylan and Holly Willoughby were discussing the topic of consent, as the University of York has made a decision to introduce compulsory sexual consent classes for next year’s intake of male students.
However the former X Factor star said he would be “outraged” if he was told “not to be a rapist” during his first week of university and asked guest Martin Daubney: “Should there be a compulsory alcohol class that talks about how much you drink then, because this is very much a two-way street?”
And viewers took to Twitter to share their opinion:
When the tweets occurred, Rylan responded to one viewer who said “this attitude is exactly why #sexual consent needs to be taught, sex with someone who is asleep if rape drunk or not [six]”.
As viewers became more irate over Rylan’s comments, the Big Brother’s Bit on the Side presenter decided to apologise for anyone who was offended.
He said: “I would like to acknowledge something that I said during today’s [This Morning].
“I believe my comments have majorly been taken out of context and if anyone was offended by what I said I do apologise but in no way [do] I condone any sexual abuse.
“I’m mortified that a small handful of you got that impression. Apologies if anyone was offended. I was referring to an earlier case study we didn’t actually touch on and have been very misinterpreted.
“Apologies if anyone offended. Have a lovely evening.”
Speaking to HuffPost UK, Katie Russell from Rape Crisis said Rylan’s choice of words was “unfortunate”: “The phrase ‘two way street’ is very unfortunate as there is no ‘two ways’ with sexual violence. The responsibility always falls with the perpetrator.
“What the phrase implies is that if someone is sexually assaulted while drunk that they have some responsibility, and that is categorically, legally and morally incorrect.”
What did you make of Rylan’s comments?
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