A BBC Panorama investigation has revealed serious allegations of assault on Channel 4’s hit reality show, Married at First Sight.

Three women who took part in the program say they were raped or sexually assaulted by their on-screen “husbands” during filming.

They have alleged that both Channel 4 and production company CPL failed in their duty of care obligations to protect them. According to the BBC, Channel 4 was aware of some of the allegations before broadcast.

The accounts are deeply troubling. They also prompt concerns about why the industry’s extensive welfare protocols may not have been enough to prevent these alleged incidents from happening.

As someone who has studied the experiences of participants in documentary television, I argue that not only are the duty of care procedures not adequate in protecting contributors, they might actually be helping to enable risky program formats to continue.

In Married at First Sight, women meet their husbands for the first time in a mock wedding ceremony. They are then propelled into an intimate relationship on an accelerated timescale.

The couples go on honeymoon, move into an apartment together and share a bed. An expectation of physical and emotional intimacy is built into the format itself, reinforced through the language of “wives”, “husbands”, “weddings” and “vows”.

Troublingly, this language was also echoed in the women’s accounts of their alleged abuse. One woman claimed that, before she was assaulted by her “husband”, he told her, “You can’t say no,........

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