In 2008, Britton revealed that she had been raped in her own home by a man who has asked her out on a date.

“Even if you get a bit drunk or if you go back to the person’s flat, once you say no then it’s no,” she said to the Mail Online at the time.

“In my case I was stone cold sober. The man came to my flat and didn’t want to leave, even when I told him to. He was someone I had recently met and who had come to pick me up and take me to dinner.

“Afterwards I shut down. I didn’t want anyone to know about it. I just wanted to pretend it never happened.”

The attack lasted all night, Britton said, and in the morning the man dressed and left. She did not speak publicly about the incident until she included it in her memoirs in 2008.

She did not report the incident to the police as she felt she had been at fault, explaining: “I didn’t have bruises and he didn’t hit me.

“I felt that I should have done something. I think the majority of women who find themselves in a situation where something happens that they didn’t want, even if it was not full-blown rape, they won’t report it.”

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