A man abused me when I was 14 and I didn't think I could complain, reveals KITTY DIMBLEBY. Now I want to kill him, says her mother BEL MOONEY - as Mail writers bravely expose a toxic sexual culture that shockingly endures

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Singer Sophie Ellis-Bextor last week revealed that she lost her virginity aged 17 when she was raped by an older man.

Here, mother and daughter Bel Mooney and Kitty Dimbleby write with painful honesty about toxic sexual attitudes in their own times — and wonder if things will ever change . . .

KITTY DIMBLEBY: Aged 14, a man abused me and I didn't think I could complain

When it happened, I was 14. I'd never had a boyfriend and didn't need to wear a bra. I was one of the smallest and skinniest girls in our year at school.

I didn't feel pretty or sexy and, oh, how I wanted to be fancied — an awful word but it's the one we used. I was desperate to shrug off my childhood far too soon.

So, when I met a good-looking 19-year-old (through a friend's elder brother), I was beyond thrilled that this man chose to flirt with me. We hung out in the park and kissed a few times. My peers were impressed, and I was flattered.

After a few meetings (I can't call them dates), I agreed to go back to his place. It was daytime and it didn't occur to me how wrong it was that a man was taking a sexual interest in me, a child.

He lived with his mum and had a double bed in his bedroom. This grown-up detail made my heart contract with anxiety as he shut the door. He smelt of Lynx body spray and the scent still makes me feel queasy.

I can't remember his name, but I do recall what I was wearing: black platform shoes, thick black school tights with a kilt (not that different from my uniform skirt, but much shorter) and a T-shirt. They were clothes I'd smuggled out in a backpack to change into once away from my parents' watchful gaze.

Almost before I'd realised what was happening, my shoes and tights had been removed. It was clear that he was expecting me to have sex with him.

Physically I froze as he pushed me back on to the bed, his hand in my underwear.

I mumbled something about not having any protection, but he said it didn't matter. It was only when I asked him to imagine how awful it would be to tell my father that I was pregnant that he backed off. Instead, he insisted on oral sex. For both of us. I hated every second but felt there was no other choice but to comply.

I didn't say no or shout out to his mother who was only downstairs. I didn't struggle but, leaving aside the fact I was underage, there was no consent.

I didn't tell my friends the full story, and certainly didn't tell my parents. It didn't even occur to me that it was something I could report to the police. I just made sure never to see him again.

Pictured: Kitty Dimbleby seen in 1995

Later on, as my peers became more experienced and every snog or grope was a badge of honour, I rewrote history, making the experience something I could use as a brag, a proof of my maturity — rather than express the shame and disgust I really felt.

It wasn't the last time in my life where consent was murky at best, when I went along with things because it felt like the easier, safer option. The sad truth is, almost every woman I know has had a similar experience. In the 1990s and 2000s, when I came of age, the ladette culture was rife. Women were men's equals — we could outdrink them, out-swear them and out-sh*g them, too.

But, of course, we were far from equals in reality. No meant no — but 'I'm not sure', 'I'm not comfortable' meant 'yes'. Being too drunk to consent was also a 'yes'.

As young women we were taught again and again how not to get raped, how not to get attacked. We were told that if we didn't take one of the actions that had been drummed into us (not to get too drunk, walk home alone, wear revealing clothing, leave a drink unattended), any physical assault was somehow our fault.

Our male peers needed no such education and none of the men I know was ever taught anything about consent.

I want to feel things are changing: that men are finally being held to account, that they understand consent means an active 'yes' rather than passive acceptance.

But an investigation earlier this year by UN Women UK — which found that 97 per cent of women aged 18 to 24 have been sexually harassed, with a further 96 per cent not reporting those situations in the belief it would not change anything — makes it hard to believe so.

Things certainly aren't changing quickly enough for the next generation of girls, for my nine-year-old daughter and her friends.

There is a quote I love which reads: 'If you want to change the world, go home and love your family.' So, while I feel helpless in the face of the figures above, my chest tightening in horror when I read about the killings of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa, my husband and I will do that.

With love, we teach our daughter and our son about consent, about respecting themselves and others. That no one has a right to touch them without their permission, nor should they touch someone else without permission. That anything other than a 'yes' is, in fact, a 'no'. If this takes some of the romance out of it all, so be it.

However, I won't teach my daughter how not to get attacked or raped. Her behaviour, her clothing, how much she doesn't drink, cannot change the actions of a man who wishes to harm her.

But I will teach my son that it is never OK to take what isn't expressly given. Because while I know it is not all men, I know it is all women, and it's time for male violence against women to be something that men fix — not us.

Bel Mooney: Now that I know, I want to kill him. Tragically so little's changed since I was young

All mothers dread the time when their daughters become vulnerable to boys. But reading Kitty's experience now for the very first time I'm horrified — and incandescent with rage — that a 19-year-old man would force a shy, very unconfident girl of 14 into a sexual act. Yes, I could kill him.

And yet, though I did not have similar experiences during my own girlhood, sadly as a young woman I also came up against my share of unwelcome advances.

In my day, the late 1960s, nobody had heard of 'consent'. The sexual taboos of the 1950s and early 1960s had disappeared down the plughole in the great sloshy bath of so-called 'liberation'. No girl who wanted to be thought 'cool' would say 'No'.

When I went up to University College London in 1966, I had no idea what to expect. The capital was daunting, the distance from bedsit to college enormous, my fellow students intimidating.

And in the middle of it all, aged 20, I was desperately lonely, missing my parents, my cosy bedroom in our semi, that safe life.

Student life was far from safe. You had to be careful of your male tutor, because he'd take a pop at you if he could. Mine did.

If there were charming male students who didn't think it their absolute right to get you into bed, I rarely met them. I hung out with Left-wing types who believed the Marxist idea, 'property is theft' — so why would any girl feel she owned her own body? When you despise traditional values, it's your right to take what you want — and up the revolution, comrades.

With the condition of the working class and nuclear war to protest about, those students had no time for women's rights. The women's liberation movement was a mere squeak of protest — and leftist men agreed with the mantra 'A woman's place is underneath'.

Perhaps it was my own fault. Blaming yourself is par for the course for many women — silly girls should take more care of themselves. Of course, you're to blame if your skirt is short and you're so careless you miss the last bus so agree to stay the night in the flat of a guy you hardly know. Fool!

He reassures you that he'll 'crash' on the beaten-up old sofa, but then he jumps on you. You're so pretty, so sexy, he says, he can't control himself. When a lithe 22-year-old male straddles you and pins your arms, you're helpless.

Oh, you try to push him off, squeaking, 'No, I don't want this'. But do you knee his groin, scratch his face, go for his eyes? Of course not.

Girls like me (and I was never drunk) were conditioned to think being attractive to men was a badge of femininity.

Speaking out: Kitty Dimbleby and her mother Bel Mooney

Girls like me (who secretly thought themselves unattractive) were actually quite grateful to be desired. Yes — thank you, kind sir, for forcing sex on me. Nowadays they call it 'date rape'. The reward for my stupidity was the morning 'walk of shame' — and being ignored the next day.

When The Shirelles recorded Will You Love Me Tomorrow in 1961 it was a brave, ground-breaking lyric about female anxiety over 'giving in' to sex. It recognised that for the man it was probably just a lustful one night stand.

I loved it because the pathetic hopefulness of the lyric sounded like all the horrible mistakes I made. In 1967, I'd be listening to Aretha Franklin singing Respect in the realisation that respect was an illusion. Forget All You Need Is Love — the real song of the age was 'all you need is sex'.

I look back now with some horror to those days when the zeitgeist was so exploitative. Forced to think about it for this article, I still feel a shudder of shame. But not shame for the men who thought it their right to treat the opposite sex so badly. Why? Instead, I'm ashamed of the highly intelligent young woman I was whose spirit loved literature, who painted and wrote poetry — but who let herself be used, again and again. Without ever questioning her own pathetic behaviour or the greedy, domineering, entitled, predatory sexuality of the men she didn't always even fancy.

I had no idea of my own worth — and now wonder why nobody had enlightened me.

The wild 1970s decade was on the horizon —and it all became worse for women.

'Free love' was, in reality, 'free bonking' — and I can honestly say I didn't know anybody who questioned it.

The idea of boys being taught about 'consent' was half a century away — but so was the terrible age of online pornography which would make all such enlightened 21st-century ideas utterly irrelevant.

Nothing changes. Young women these days have embraced porn culture so readily they objectify themselves without needing men to do the job. What's more, there is a powerful Liberal elite that abets them.

Would you believe that Leicester University has just produced a 'toolkit' for student sex workers? It reads quite simply as a guide telling 18-year-olds what they can legally do and what their options are for entering this industry — and its acceptance of exploitation is horrifying. Yet I've already read mealy-mouthed 'woke' defences of a toxic betrayal of university values.

Now I am in my 70s, I can look back with pride at astounding female achievements in all areas from politics to science, yet acknowledge the bitter truth that real advancement remains out of reach for the majority. The backlash against real freedom for my sex is like waves of scummy filth on a polluted shore — on and on and on. Women's lives all over the world are as subject to constraint and violence as ever.

'Respect' and 'consent' are admirable notions, but with sexual exploitation rife they feel further away than ever before.

I'm horrified to hear of Kitty's experiences and I weep to imagine what it might be like for my granddaughter.

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