Jessie Cave opened up about her rape when she was just 14 during her brand new podcast, We Can’t Talk About That Right Now, with her sister, Bebe.
The 28-year-old actress, best known for her role as Lavender in the Harry Potter franchise, spoke openly about the incident via People.
“I think rape at 14 is pretty bad. By your tennis coach, who you trusted, a position of power,” she shared in the debut episode. “I was fit and I was very able with a tennis ball. But I was still taken advantage of, and he was sent to jail.”
Jessie went on, saying that the incident, while traumatizing, is a part of her but doesn’t define her.
“I am not a victim and was not defined by what happened as a girl,” she said. “I am okay and I can talk about it, even laugh about it, carry it with me and use it. I have done so extensively and [publicly] in past writing, my show Sunrise for example, even talked about it on other people’s podcasts about mental health and love. I bring it up casually (without trigger warnings because I forget and don’t really understand them) because it’s just a part of me and has been for over half of my life. But our podcast was not about that!”
Jessie also emphasized the fact that she is a survivor.
“The more time I have away from it, and this is going to sound awful, but I do feel quite lucky in so many ways that I had a rape that was actually … it didn’t destroy me,” she added. “I think that’s something that people don’t talk about enough with sexual abuse and trauma. There are some people that are okay after, there are some people that do use it and find a way of living with it and definitely are not defined by it.”
Jessie is currently pregnant with her third child with husband Alfie Brown.
