Jessie Cave: My tennis coach raped me at 14

'But I'm not defined by it,' comic tells her sister in frank podcast

Jessie Cave has revealed that she was raped by her former tennis coach at the age of 14.

Now 33, the comedian spoke about the assault in a new podcast with her younger sister, Bebe, who is also an actress.

In an open, but humourous conversation, Bebe said: ‘I remember we had a really bad fight once when we tried to work out who had a harder "teenagerhood".

‘I mean, I was raped, so…' said Jessie, as Lavender Brow in the Harry Potter films

Bebe then joked: ‘Yes that’s true but that’s kind of a trump card and you pull it out a bit too much’

‘’I do pull it out a lot…’ Jessie agreed before Bebe pointed out: ‘I had braces for five years! I had acnew when I was finishing my adolescence!’

"To be fair, acne and braces are bad but I think rape at 14 is pretty bad. By your tennis coach, who you trusted, who was in a position of power,’ Jessie replied.

‘At least you were an athlete and had good legs,’ Bebe said.

‘Yes, I was fit and able with a tennis ball, but I was still taken advantage of and he was sent to jail, so that’s fine.

Jessie later insisted on telling her ‘rape anecdote’, saying: ‘My rape, I think, means that I had a completely different adolescence and early twenties to you. In retrospect, I was still recovering and my sexual journey was a completely abnormal road to yours and I think there are still consequences from that time that I'm only realising 18 years later.

‘Actually, the more time I have away from it, the more – 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.

‘And I think that’s something people don’t talk about enough with sexual abuse and trauma, that there are some people that are OK after; there are some people that do use it and find a way of living with it and are not defined by it’ - including herself.

The sisters also spoke briefly about the trauma of losing their brother, Ben, last year.

He died at the age of 27, when he touched a 25,000 volt power line while drunkenly ‘train-surfing’.