Big Brother star Camilla Severi breaks her silence on the controversial ‘turkey slap’ incident

Former Big Brother star Camilla Severi has broken her silence on the controversial ‘turkey slap’ incident on the show back in 2006, that made international headlines.

The 36-year-old appeared on The Ben, Rob & Robbo Show this week and admitted in the rare interview that her ‘feelings’ about the incident have changed ‘a few times’ over the years. 

Camilla, who retreated from the spotlight after her time on the show, was involved in the scandal with co-stars Michael ‘Ashley’ Cox and Michael ‘John’ Bric, who were soon kicked off the program.

A ‘turkey slap’ is slang for when a man rubs his crotch in someone’s face. 

Camilla said that she couldn’t believe the media attention the incident received at the time and said it happened in the early hours of the morning when they were sleep deprived and after having had a few drinks. 

But she asserted that the men involved didn’t mean her any harm. 

‘It was really a moment in time,’ Camilla said. 

‘We were all mucking around and I’ve said this before, if it happened at a party and someone did that to me I’d probably say to them, ”hey that wasn’t cool” and then we’d move on,’ Camilla said on the Ben, Rob & Robbo Show. 

‘But because it happened on live TV and it’s been dissected so, so many times from different angles it was quite a confusing experience and I don’t know how the boys feel about it now. But where I’m at now with it is I feel like yes, it was, the boys didn’t mean any harm to me.’

She added: ‘They didn’t mean to hurt me and I actually didn’t mean to hurt them if I was upset the day afterwards.’ 

While Camilla said that the boys didn’t mean to hurt her, she said she ‘didn’t ask for that to happen.’ 

‘I didn’t ask for that to happen and sometimes when people ask me about it I say ”well, it’s really interesting this keeps following me around because I didn’t do it,” she said. 

She went on to sat the she isn’t ‘scarred’ by the incident, but is scarred from the ‘constant attention’ it still receives. 

‘There’s so much other stuff that’s going on in my life and this was like such a blip on the radar,’ she said. 

The incident occurred on July 1, 2006, and was live streamed on the Big Brother website. At the time, police investigated but no charges were laid.

The incident caused such an uproar that then Prime Minister John Howard even spoke about it, telling Macquarie Radio: ‘Well here’s a great opportunity for Channel Ten to do a bit of self-regulation and get this stupid program off the air.’ 

As reported by News.com.au in 2009, Cox reportedly told Zoo Weekly magazine that the incident ‘ruined his life.’

‘It ruined my life,’ Cox said. 

‘I was branded a rapist on national TV. The hardest part was having no support from anyone.’