She said no. She didn’t want it, she made that very clear, but he did it anyway; pushing her feelings aside as though they didn’t matter, because to him they seemingly didn’t. It’s a story so depressingly common that most women probably carry a private version of it in their heads, either buried in their own memories or confided to them by a friend. But still, there’s something profoundly shocking about the idea of it happening right under the noses of a TV audience.

Perhaps you’ve never watched Channel 4’s hit show Married at First Sight, which involves putting total strangers through a purely ceremonial “wedding” and making them live as husband and wife for six weeks to see whether they actually want to make a go of the relationship. But you’re almost certainly familiar with Panorama, which this week told the stories of three former “brides”. Lizzie and Chloe (not their real names) both say they were raped by their on-screen “husbands” – and, in Lizzie’s case, also subjected to alarmingly violent outbursts of temper and an alleged threat of an acid attack – while Shona Manderson, who has spoken publicly, accuses hers of sexual misconduct. All three men, it should be said, deny the allegations.

Long before this story broke, the risks inherent in putting human beings through the emotional shredder for the sake of an evening’s mindless telly were already crystal-clear. It’s hard to disagree with Caroline Dinenage, the chair of parliament’s culture select committee, that Married at First Sight was an “accident waiting to happen”, given the way it blurs boundaries by pushing total strangers into bed with each other. But it’s hardly alone in........

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