AMANDA Abbington has claimed Giovanni Pernice made a shocking sexual gesture to her in the Strictly Come Dancing rehearsal room.
In her first interview since the findings of a BBC investigation into Giovanni's conduct on the programme was released, Amanda shared new details of her experience in the training room.
She told Newsnight's Victoria Derbyshire: "It was an ongoing litany of being verbally abused, sexual innuendo, sexual gestures. There was a 35 minute rant at me with him throwing his hands in the air and calling me names and how he couldn't cope with it anymore.
She continued: "When I got a dance step right he would outline his erection in his trousers and tell me my dance move made that happen, because I got it right.
"The other sexual allegation was verbal. They weren’t isolated one-off incidents."
However, a spokesman for Giovanni told The Sun: "It's disappointing that Ms Abbington would knowingly mislead the outcome of the report in order to further damage Giovanni's reputation.
"While Ms Abbington may not like the outcome of the six month investigation, she should not seek to spread false and defamatory claims."
The BBC upheld six of the 17 complaints she made against the Italian, dancer who later quit the show, and apologised to Amanda.
It found instances of Giovanni using swear words and "belittling" language and giving negative feedback.
And the report also found there there were two moments of "inappropriate behaviour of sexual banter in the workplace".
These incidents were made and received consensually as jokes, humour and compliments of Amanda dancing, the report found.
Reflecting on the impact her Strictly experience and its aftermath have had on her life, Amanda said: "It's been one of the worst years of my life.
"I've been through a lot. It has been a very unpleasant, turbulent relentless time in my life. I've had to deal with myriad horrible things that have continued to happen just for complaining about, I don't like that word, alerting people to what I deemed was bad behaviour."
Among the more sinister aspects of the fallout were death threats and even a sickening rape threat made against her 15-year-old daughter, all of which have been referred to the Met Police.
Despite all of this, Amanda insisted she has no regrets about making her complaints.
Giovanni released a statement after the findings were made public.
In it, he said: "It's over. It's finished.
"Six months, seven months of all of this. Seven months of reading everyday things in the newspaper and not be able to respond because I wanted to keep the confidentiality and privacy of the review, was a difficult time. It was difficult because, you know, reading stuff that were untrue, wasn’t the nicest time of my life lets be honest.
"But today im happy because, you know, at the beginning there were very very serious allegations thrown out at me but as in today, none of the serious allegations have been upheld.
"All the threatening, abusive, harassment behaviour allegations have not been upheld."
The Sun revealed Amanda will now have sit down talks with the BBC later this month and could take legal action.
