Padma Lakshmi is a top actress and also the host of Top Chef. In a recent shocking revelation, the 32-year-old actress has opened up about how she was raped when she was just 16 years old by her then boyfriend. Lakshmi shared her experience in an op-ed column of a world-famous newspaper.

“You may want to know if I had been drinking on the night of my rape. It doesn’t matter, but I was not drunk. Maybe you will want to know what I was wearing or if I had been ambiguous about my desires. It still doesn’t matter, but I was wearing a long-sleeved, black Betsey Johnson maxi dress that revealed only my shoulders,” she wrote.

Going by what she wrote, she was at a party with her then 23-year-old boyfriend. But Padma recalls how she woke up to find her boyfriend in a compromising position and her tears did not help her. She also recalled another experience when she was 7 years old and was harassed by her step father’s relative. On an ending note, she urged all women to open up so that men might stop hurting women.