"I felt ashamed of what happened".

Cara Delevingne has explained why she was reluctant to report her own experience of sexual abuse.

“I felt ashamed of what happened and didn’t want to publicly ruin someone’s life”, the actress wrote on Twitter.

She shared her story under the hashtag WhyIDidntReport.

It initially emerged after US President Donald Trump claimed that victims of sexual abuse should have informed the authorities at the time of the incident.

His divisive comments come after sexual assault allegations were levelled against Brett Kavanaugh, the President’s pick for a lifetime position on the US Supreme Court. Mr Kavanaugh is alleged to have assaulted several women when he was a teenager.

It’s believed that Delevingne refers to shamed Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, after she claimed he made unwanted advances to her in a hotel room.

“I was so hesitant about speaking out. I didn’t want to hurt his family. I felt guilty as if I did something wrong”, she wrote on Instagram at the time.

“I was also terrified that this sort of thing had happened to so many women I know but no one had said anything because of fear.”

Charmed actress Alyssa Milano also shared her story under the WhyIDidntReport hashtag.

“The first time it happened, I was 7. I told the first adults I came upon. They said “Oh, he’s a nice old man, that’s not what he meant.” So when I was raped at 15, I only told my diary. When an adult read it, she accused me of having sex with an adult man.”