TV star and influencer GK Barry has revealed she was raped at the age of 17 by an older boss during her work experience. Grace Keeling, 27, known for her sarcastic, dry humour and hilarious stories, has spoken out about her sexual assault for the first time, saying it will be ‘worth it’ if it helps ‘even one of them’ – referring to her young audience.
Grace Keeling’s harrowing account
In an interview with Fabulous magazine, Grace explained that she decided to write about the harrowing experience in her new book, It’s Giving Life. The TikTok sensation, who rose to online fame during the pandemic, said: ‘I always thought rape was someone in a dark alleyway jumping out at you – but it wasn’t like that at all.’
The rape happened during her second year of college during her work experience, with the manager she was reporting to, who was 10 years her senior, once offering to drive her in when she couldn’t get a lift. Grace pens in her book that he kept ‘touching [her] leg’ and making her ‘uncomfortable’, noting that there was a major ‘power imbalance’ and she didn’t feel able to ask him to stop.
Instead of taking her to the office, he drove them to an empty park, where he demanded she give him oral sex. ‘I didn’t know what else to do except go along with what he was telling me. Resisting or fighting back felt like it might make things worse,’ she said. ‘There was never a moment in my mind where I thought I could say no to what was happening. I was only 17 and scared. I wasn’t able to process the situation and think logically.’
Attack and aftermath
Grace continued her work experience, fearful that quitting would mean she wouldn’t get into university after failing her course. Then, on her final day, the then-teenager was taken to a room by her manager, who had already told everyone else to go home. He locked the door and told her to remove her jeans, assaulting her and leaving her bleeding and in pain. ‘Rape. It’s taken me 10 years to realise that’s what it was.’
Grace ‘blamed [herself]’ after the attack and had found it ‘flattering’ that the ‘good-looking guy’ was giving her attention. ‘I kept thinking, “I should have said no firmer”,’ she said. ‘It was make-or-break for me going to uni, which at that age felt like a huge deal. I thought, “I just will never tell anyone about this”.’
Over time, Grace has been able to ‘come to terms’ with the fact that it ‘shouldn’t have happened’. She also felt compelled to speak out a year later when she learnt that another girl from her college was going to the same place for work experience, certain that it would ‘happen to her’ too. Though she found it more traumatic having to ‘relive it’ 12 months on when a teacher was informed.
Police response and lack of support
Due to her age, the college had to tell her parents, and then they reported the rape to the police. Grace can still ‘remember so clearly’ the moment she had to tell her mum, who was ‘in shock’ but ‘didn’t blame’ her daughter. She then told Grace’s dad, but ‘to this day’, Grace herself has never spoken to him about it directly.
Sadly, a few days later when she spoke to a female police officer, she was told that there was ‘very little point’ taking matters further due to a lack of ‘evidence’. The officer told Grace it was her word ‘against his’, and since she had been texting the man, it was likely to appear ‘black-and-white’, making it harder to secure a conviction. While Grace ‘understood what she was saying’, she was never reassured. ‘At no point did she say that he had done anything wrong.’
Grace wasn’t offered any further support, she says a decade later, nor did she seek therapy to process the horrific incident. Still, she has found it ‘helpful’ to open up, particularly to her partner of two years, footballer Ella Rutherford, 26, who responded by telling her the rape was ‘not [her] fault’.
Grace’s message and career
‘I think the perception is that rapists are creepy men lurking in the dark, but actually most rapes happen with people you know or are friends with, and that makes it so much harder,’ Grace concluded in the interview. ‘It’s not all men, but it is always men. The majority of women have some experience of being letched over, all the way up to serious offences.’
Following her almost overnight rise to popularity during lockdown, self-deprecating content creator Grace has gone on to become a household name. As well as her Saving Grace podcast, with which she’s toured the country, she became the youngest regular panellist on ITV’s Loose Women. In 2024, she finished fifth in I’m A Celebrity and will next be seen as a co-host of Big Brother: The Group Chat alongside Kate Lawler when the social experiment returns in autumn.
