‘X Factor’ hopeful Stephanie Nala has revealed the extent of the violent threats she’s been receiving during her time on the show, including from former gang rivals.
The young singer claims that she has been bombarded with over 200 hateful messages over the past week, admitting that it put her in mind of problems she had with gangs earlier in her life, that had her scared to leave the school gates.
Stephanie Nala
She tells The Sun: “When I was 14 I used to hang around with a girl in the older years, and our group had problems with a gang from a different school.
“There were times when I had to leave school early because there were a load of girls waiting for me outside the gates. It got so bad that the police were called once.”
Although Stephanie insists that all of this happened “years ago” and is now behind her, she says that now she’s in the public eye the threats have started once again.
“One message, from someone who lives near me, said I was only on X Factor because of what I look like - and when I leave that can be changed.”
After telling producers about the violent Twitter messages she’s been receiving, the offending users have now been reported to the website, with Stephanie claiming she’s also been advised to report them to the police.
This isn’t the first time she’s revealed that she’s been sent abusive messages, taking to Twitter on Sunday night to ask people to “stop telling me to die”, after she was saved in the first ‘X Factor’ sing-off of 2014, against boyband Overload Generation.