Ulrika: 'I blamed myself for rape'

Ulrika Jonsson blamed herself after being raped as a teenager and said she was so paralysed with panic that she could not scream out.

The presenter describes her ordeal in a television interview with Piers Morgan which will be screened on British TV later this month.

The mother-of-four also revealed that her attacker suggested they should go to the cinema after the rape, which she said happened in a hotel room when she was 19 and working for TV-am as a secretary.

“I felt I’d allowed myself into a situation which I shouldn’t have,” she told Morgan who was interviewing her for his ITV1 'Life Stories' series.

“I blamed myself.”

Fighting back tears, Jonsson, 41, went on: “Afterwards I just lay there – and he said: ’We should go to the cinema’.

“I said: ’I can’t go’. I don’t remember what I said but I stayed and he left. I actually don’t think he realised what he’d done.”

She said she knew the man and was happy to kiss him, but was not in any sort of relationship with him.

“He was charming and very nice and then things started to happen very quickly,” she said.

“He got very amorous and I panicked because to me that was not what I was expecting.

“I panicked to the extent my voice wasn’t working – I couldn’t get anything out.

“I felt like I was screaming and saying: ’No, no, no!’ I probably was at the beginning.”

“I don’t think at that stage there was this definition of a ’date rape’ – of knowing somebody, of trusting somebody and somebody not understanding when you say no.

“The fact that I ended up in hospital because it was not consensual meant that this was clearly an aggressive act.”

She said she did not contact police because she blamed herself.

“I felt a bit foolish. I think that was the overwhelming feeling.”

Jonsson first made the rape allegation in her autobiography, describing her attacker as a high-profile television presenter. She never named him and did not make a complaint or pursue the matter with the police.

But chat show host Matthew Wright later linked former 'Blue Peter' presenter John Leslie to the allegation after blurting out his name during a live TV exchange.

Later, Leslie said that lies “destroyed” his public career.