AS she walked down the aisle, Amy Kenynon was really hoping she was about to meet the love of her life.
But within minutes, the 29-year-old knew she was embarking on anything but a fairytale romance. What followed, says Amy, was weeks of being sexually degraded on camera, and now, for the first time, she reveals what went on when shooting ended for the day.
She tells us: “Sexual harassment went on, and mine happened on camera. I just had to deal with it, and everybody was just laughing at it. It was making good TV, even if I did feel uncomfortable 80% of the time.
“I had a very, very, very difficult time on the show. And went through all that like sexual harassment publicly. I had to have therapy afterwards.”
Amy – who was working in sales when she applied for the show – was partnered with Luke Debono in 2024 as they entered the experiment as an ‘intruder’ couple
, meaning they joined later than the original pairings.
Straight away, Amy tells us she knew something was off, and she burst into tears just moments after walking down the aisle.
She was asked if he was the kind of guy she would approach in a bar, and she told producers: “No, he’s a creepy guy I would avoid at the bar. I remember having to share a bed with him that evening. And I thought, oh my God, I can’t do this.
“But I put up pillows as a barrier to keep him away from me. You tell yourself, oh, it’s an experiment. This is how it’s meant to feel. This is how it’s meant to happen, but you can’t help but feel sometimes, is this right?”
Doubting her own feelings soon became the norm for Amy throughout the experience as she continued to tell herself it was just what she had signed up for.
She says Luke, who is from Malta, wasted no time in making his intentions clear.
Amy remembers: “It was uncomfortable, and it wasn’t nice. He was very sexually explicit and constantly making derogatory jokes. I’m not that sensitive, but it was the fact that I was asking him to stop, and he wouldn’t.
“It started straight away. When we went on the honeymoon, that’s when I said, look, you really make me feel uncomfortable. Can you tone it down a little bit?
“But as soon as he saw people laughing at things he was coming out with, it just got worse and worse and worse.”
Indeed, Luke would openly discuss their sex life in front of their fellow contestants and the advisors, leaving viewers disgusted.
In one of the sessions with the experts, Amy told them Luke had made her feel uncomfortable for taking off his shirt during a pottery session and telling her he wished the stool he was sitting on were her face.
At another point, he told her: “I wish I’d have got down on my knees while you were cooking in the kitchen and terrorised your b*****e.”
Amy felt they were encouraged to not only speak about sex, but also have sex on the show.
She says: “When you sit on the couch, in front of the experts, they ask, ‘Have you been intimate?’ And if you’re saying you like each other and blah, blah, blah, it’s like, well, why haven’t we been intimate? And it’s like, oh, my God, should I be being intimate?
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“Usually, I would want to know someone for a few weeks before doing stuff like that, you know? The experiment is fast-paced, and you have to move at a faster pace. Looking back now, I wish I hadn’t.”
Once they started having sex, Amy says she asked Luke not to share certain details on camera.
“I said, ‘I’m not speaking about that on television’. I really do not want to do it. Please don’t humiliate me. I want my dad to be able to watch this. I want to watch it with my family.
“Anyway, he promised me he wouldn’t. And then he spoke about it to another groom, and the scene was included. And I didn’t know until like the week that they rang me and said, just to let you know, this is going to happen. And he was speaking about parking the car in the garage, which sounds disgusting.”
While a lot of Luke’s comments did make it on camera, Amy claims a lot happened when the cameras stopped rolling.
She says: “If I’m honest, that’s not even the bit that I struggled with most. Honestly, some of the things he would say to me off camera, I didn’t know if he was trying to gaslight me, to get a reaction or if he was telling the truth.”
She recalls one horrifying story where he claimed to have killed his mum’s dog.
Amy remembers: “I freaked out, and he was telling me this whole story about how it happened. He had an argument with his mum, and he took it out on the dog. And obviously I’ve got a dog – I just went really stiff and really scared. I didn’t know if he was telling the truth.”
A lot of what Amy claims Luke said is not printable, but she tells us it was “weird, sick things”.
She adds: “On camera, he was obsessed with me. He was doting on me. But when we were, say, for example, in bed together, he’d just say like, just like really weird, sick things. I feel like he was trying to really play with my emotions.”
Once the series aired, Amy really struggled watching it, explaining: “I started questioning myself, because I got trolled so bad off the back of the show, and I thought, why do people not see that the way he’s being is wrong?
“Having to watch it back was even worse. I felt humiliated.
“I’m standing up for myself and telling him to stop speaking a certain way to me.
“I have standards, and I would never want my daughter to be spoken to like that by a man, to be sexually degraded. I think he’s the most vile human being I’ve ever met.”
The pair called it quits during the final vow ceremony.
Things became even more disturbing after the experience ended, and she says she received a call from someone who claimed they used to date Luke and also had a difficult experience.
More claims were made, and the decision was made by
Channel 4 not to allow Luke back to
film the reunion show.
Amy adds: “I had a lucky escape.”
Amazingly, Amy doesn’t lay any of the blame on the broadcaster and believes they undertook all the necessary checks.
“It is so thorough. But for me, the guy I was with, he was from Malta,” she says. “So if you’re doing a DBS screening on him in the UK, it’s not going to come up, is it?”
“They might have done things, and they haven’t been reported. So it doesn’t mean they’re still not crazy. With regards to screening and picking people, you just never know what someone’s really like.”
Amy believes the only way for MAFS to continue is to have 24-hour CCTV in those apartments.
She says: “They need that surveillance in the apartments. Because they can vet the people, but you don’t truly know who somebody is. So there is the risk.
“From my experience, if anybody has ever brought anything to light, especially on my season, there were a few instances where they just got removed from the show completely.
“It’s not like they were being told and then they didn’t act. People want to stay in the experiment because it’s exciting and it’s fun, and they tend to stay quiet about what’s really happening in the relationships.
“I only really put myself to blame for actually putting up with it.”
Luke has been contacted for comment.
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