Aluna Francis, singer and songwriter in the British dance duo AlunaGeorge, has told the BBC that a former collaborator – not her bandmate George Reid – attempted to force her to perform oral sex on him.

In an episode of BBC podcast the Next Episode that focuses on #MeToo and the music industry, Francis alleged that the man offered to let her charge her phone in his hotel room after they had been working on a song. When she accepted, she said he became “a completely different person – his behaviour went from nought to 100”.

Francis said that after the man tried to force his hands into her underwear, “he pinned me down and he’d taken his trousers down and he was trying to put his dick in my mouth. So I wrestled him off, and he was still laughing cause he thought it was a game and that I was having a really fun time having a pretend rape situation.”

Francis escaped from the room, and told the BBC: “You would think that I understood how wrong this was straight away and I didn’t. Musicians are crazy ambitious about getting their craft out there. And that’s why I think there’s so much shame about these kind of situations: Am I that stupid? What is wrong with me? Why have I compartmentalised all of this just for my career? That’s madness.”

She said she returned to the studio with the man and spoke to him about his behaviour. “He did all his apologies and talked about how he was so incredibly sorry and [that] this has never happened before,” she said, adding that she did not consider reporting the alleged incident to police. “You’re dealing with it all the time. Even if it goes up to a high level, you’re still playing out this role of ‘It’s fine’.” She said she was “so scared” to tell her story.

Francis formed AlunaGeorge with Reid in 2012. The following year they released their debut album, Body Music.

The Next Episode is available on BBC Sounds.