Kacey Ainsworth was groomed as a child.
Kacey Ainsworth (c) Twitter
The 48-year-old actress - who is best known for playing Little Mo in 'EastEnders' between 2000 and 2006 - has thrown her support behind the Never Too Late To Tell campaign after she was a victim of sexual grooming by an older actor.
Speaking on 'Loose Women' on Tuesday (08.08.17), Kacey said: "I started work in the 1970s, I was eight at the time when I started working. What I realise now is that paedophiles work in plain sight. Maybe tickle you, single you out. And this is kind of what happened to me. It was in a production and it was very inappropriate what he was doing. I felt it was inappropriate at the time but because it was in front of everybody it kind of normalised it. The tickling was inappropriate and then he would take me to more and more private places. And that's what happens. It's predatory, it's incremental.
"You kind of don't understand what they're doing and when things start moving forward you then freeze. You don't know what to do, you don't know who to tell and you don't know what to say. I was starting puberty. They were touching areas that were growing. That felt odd and weird."
The actress admitted the grooming and sexual touching didn't stop until a member of the production crew got involved.
In June, the actress appeared on the panel show and revealed she was joining the campaign but that was before she openly admitted to being a victim.
For her role as Little Mo in the BBC soap the actress won three awards all in 2002.
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