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 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 just 19 and working for TV-am as a secretary.

"I felt I'd allowed myself into a situation which I shouldn't have," the presenter told Piers Morgan who was interviewing her for his Life Stories series. "I blamed myself."

cinema

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."

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

weaknesses

"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."

She told Morgan one of her "great weaknesses" was that she had an "inability to assert myself properly".

Talking about her ordeal, she said: "I'd only been sexually active for about a year and a half so this was quite an overwhelming experience.

"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.

LIEs

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 studio exchange on Five.

Later, Leslie said that lies "destroyed" his public career.

The interview is due to be screened on ITV1 on Sunday March 29 at 10pm.

hnews@herald.ie

- Wesley Johnson