A popular KIIS FM radio star has revealed he was raped in Sydney.
Joshua Fox, who is a producer on The Kyle and Jackie O Show, has shared details of the terrifying incident in his new autobiographical book, What You Into?.
The memoir, laid out in the form of diary entries, documents his lifelong struggle with depression and spiral into sex addiction after the breakdown of his marriage in 2021.
In the book, Joshua bravely opens up about trying to end his own life at the age 24 and his devastating account of being raped in Sydney after he connected with a stranger on gay hook-up app Grindr.
The sexual assault occurred in August 2022 after Joshua went to meet the man for sex less than an hour after speaking online during a period when he was using the app frequently following his split with his husband.
He chose not to report the incident to the police as he thought he would be ‘seen as less of a man’ and feared judgement as sexual violence is something ‘men rarely talk about being victims of’.
In an extract shared exclusively with Daily Mail Australia, Joshua said upon arriving at the man’s penthouse in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs he was immediately led to the stranger’s bedroom without exchanging names beforehand.
‘We both knew why I was there, and there was no reason to pretend otherwise or extend the unnecessary pleasantries,’ he shared.
Popular KIIS FM radio star Joshua Fox (pictured) has revealed he was raped in Sydney and once attempted to end his own life whilst battling depression
‘I’ve been in this situation (casual hook-ups) so many times before and no longer think twice about how dehumanising the whole process is, nor do I really contemplate the potential danger anymore. Yet everything about this felt off.
‘We’d agreed over chat that I’d **** him, and that’s all I wanted to do. He’d said that was fine.
‘It may take the ”romance” out of things by stating what you will and won’t do beforehand but, let’s be honest, there is no romance with casual hook-ups.’
Joshua recalled how the man, who was considerably taller and broader than him, then became aggressive and ‘forceful’, grabbing his throat despite his objections and raping him.
‘I didn’t say anything. I just lay there. Facedown. In pain. In silence,’ he added.
Speaking to Daily Mail Australia, Joshua said he felt something was ‘off’ when he first met the man, but he was seeking validation from hook-ups after the failure of his marriage to his husband Wade.
‘I was doing it for validation, thinking ”well my husband might have left but this person wants to have sex with me, so I’ll go have sex with him because that means I’m not unlovable”,’ he said.
Joshua, who is a producer on The Kyle and Jackie O Show, has shared details of the heartbreaking incident in his new autobiographical book, What You Into?
‘I thought something was off, you know when you just feel something in the pit of your stomach? But then it was like, well I can see this through and to see if I can get that brief dopamine hit that I’d started to rely on to get me through the days, or I can turn around now and go back to an empty house where I’m going to feel sad and lonely and depressed.
‘So I stayed in the hope I would feel something or less alone briefly, but obviously that didn’t happen. When that person was doing what they were doing, I was just thinking this ”is what my life has become?”’
Joshua detailed how he spiralled into a bout of depression after the rape and struggled to sleep, which led to him being prescribed sleeping tablets and a higher dosage of anti-depressant medication.
He said he became ‘fascinated’ with the perpetrator and would often find himself driving past his house at night, despite having ‘no idea’ why he wanted to do so.
‘I was almost fascinated by this person who probably doesn’t even remember me or think what he did was anything wrong because we met on a sex app,’ he said.
Joshua questioned if he had ‘deserved’ the assault because he had always struggled with feeling ‘unwanted’ and ‘unworthy of love’.
‘Afterwards, I felt that maybe he did that because he saw the real me,’ he said.
The memoir documents his lifelong struggle with depression and spiral into sex addiction after the breakdown of his marriage in 2021 (he is pictured with Jackie O Henderson)
‘I grew up feeling unworthy of love and then that man was maybe the first person who physically almost proved what I felt about myself, he was the first person to do something physically that I felt I almost deserved.
‘That’s what messed me up a lot afterwards because it was like this has happened, but I almost felt I deserved it because I was putting myself in these situations.’
He later re-downloaded Grindr and admitted he ‘subconsciously wanted something to happen again to almost justify how bad and low I was feeling at that time.’
‘I was almost welcoming bad stuff, because after that, I felt so worthless, more than ever. I thought, ”if I’m feeling like this, it might as well happen again because it’s all I’m worth in this world”,’ he added.
Joshua, only opened up to one friend in Sweden about the rape and didn’t even tell his family at the time because he was scared of being seen as ‘less of a man’ or a ‘victim’.
‘In the year or so after as I struggled and got worse and worse, I was like ”f**k, I can never tell anyone about this”, because they’re going to see me as less of a man and less of a person and I’m going to be seen no longer as Josh,’ he explained.
Joshua, who is from England and lives in Sydney, only shared the truth about the sexual assault, as well as a suicide attempt in his Twenties, with his mother this year when he sent her a copy of his book.
‘I hadn’t told anyone except that one friend. I hadn’t told my family, and that was the thing I was worried about. So a few months ago I sent my mum a copy of the book the second it was finished,’ he said.
‘I said, ”please don’t phone me until you’ve read the whole thing”. Then she did and the next day she booked a flight and came to Australia straight away.’
In another heartbreaking extract from his book, Joshua detailed how he attempted to end his own life at the age of 24 when he was living in London because he saw ‘no future for himself’.
‘I had no desire to see another day,’ he shares of his suicide attempt. ‘The world then started to fade around me.
Joshua only opened up to one friend about the rape and didn’t even tell his family at the time – only revealing the truth to his mother (pictured) in his book manuscript earlier this year
Joshua (left) also details the extent of his sex addiction and how the turning point for him came when his colleagues on The Kyle And Jackie O Show urged him to seek help
‘The noise of bustling East London outside my window became silent. My vision blurred into the heaviest black.
‘And my lungs begged for one final breath, which was never meant to come. Except it did.’
Joshua said he didn’t have a ‘sense of relief’ or a ‘newfound lease on life’ when he survived, and instead ‘subconsciously’ just stopped caring about his life.
‘It was like I subconsciously stopped caring about anything. I still worked and held down jobs, but I never took any safety in anything,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘When the worst that can happen is you die – that’s already something I’ve tried to do.’
Joshua also detailed the extent of his sex addiction years later following the breakdown of his marriage.
He admitted to sleeping with more than 400 people as a coping mechanism after his marriage ended and the later sexual assault, and then contracted chlamydia and gonorrhea from unprotected sex.
‘After that incident in the nine months or so that followed [the assault], I just spiralled and the sex got more frequent and more unsafe. I stopped using protection completely. My worst day was eight people in one day,’ he said.
Joshua said he felt it was important to discuss such topics in his book to raise awareness of how men are victims of sexual violence. He was also inspired after watching Netflix hit Baby Reindeer (pictured: Richard Gadd on the show)
In Baby Reindeer, Richard Gadd details his rape at the hands of his male comedy mentor, played by Tom Goodman-Hill (pictured) – something Joshua said he could ‘resonate’ with
‘Then my Nanna died and went to Europe and there it was just person after person just trying to deal with that grief while also dealing with everything else.
‘After I got back to Australia, I found out I had chlamydia and gonorrhea.’
His turning point came when his colleagues on The Kyle And Jackie O Show urged him to seek help.
They warned him he might have a problem with sex addiction and, despite his objections, persuaded him to take part in an Am I A Sex Addict? quiz on the show, which he describes as a turning point.
‘I couldn’t believe I was answering the questions so vulnerably and honestly. I was like, actually I’m not having fun, this hasn’t been fun for a while and this is why I’m doing it,’ he shared.
It was then that Joshua sought out professional help and saw a sex therapist and a counsellor, both of whom helped him to confront the reasons why he was relying on sex.
Joshua said he felt it was important to discuss such topics in his book to raise awareness about how men are victims of sexual violence too, and highlight the dangers in casual sex.
He was inspired to include his sexual assault in the memoir after watching Netflix hit Baby Reindeer, in which Richard Gadd details his horrifying rape at the hands of his male comedy mentor.
‘I resonated with Richard Gadd in certain ways,’ he admitted. ‘When it got to that episode and something similar happened to him, I’ve never sat up from the sofa so quickly – it was the weirdest feeling.
‘I just felt like I was almost watching part of my own life and to see a man doing it to a man, I’d never seen that in mainstream media.
‘I saw the discussions afterwards and people applauded him for that, and I thought, ”he didn’t do anything wrong and he’s got nothing to be ashamed of, that’s very brave of him to do that”.
‘I thought, why am I scared of people knowing this? What am I ashamed or embarrassed about? This is nothing that I’ve done.’
Joshua confessed he almost removed reference to the assault in his book, but chose to leave it in because he wanted to show others they aren’t alone.
Joshua confessed he almost removed reference to the assault in his book, but chose to leave it in because he wanted to show others they aren’t alone
‘I very much almost didn’t keep it in the book, and as I go into this process, that’s the thing I’m most scared about,’ he said.
‘Men don’t really speak about this, when someone says the word rape, you never really think of a man, you automatically think a man does it to a woman because that’s – I suppose – society.’
He said one of his most ‘powerful’ realisations was knowing he wasn’t alone and that talking openly about his experiences helps, no matter how challenging.
