The 87-year-old Rutshire Chronicles writer recounted the horrific incident in a new interview, saying the MeToo movement “has been good in many ways”.
This is despite his previous comments that the movement 'diminished' men and even appeared to mock MeToo by naming one of his fictional cats MewToo.
In a new interview, however, Dame Jilly has spoken out about MeToo – which went viral in 2017 when US actress Alyssa Milano urged women to speak out about their experiences of sexual harassment or assault – saying: “It's seriously horrible. for women – terrifying – to be attacked by a man.
Speaking to Celia Walden, wife of Piers Morgan, she shared her own harrowing experience when working for a publishing company in her 20s.
“I was taken to lunch by a man and on the way back in a taxi he jumped on me and ripped off my clothes. It was terrible. I was terrified.
She went on to The telegraph: “When I got back to the office, I started crying and told my manager that someone had just tried to rape me.”
The jump! the author said her boss took her to the office and insisted she name the man who did it so he could be reported.
'But then when I told him the man's name and he realized it was one of our authors… I was whisked out of that office in two seconds. So yes, I think [MeToo] It has been good in many ways.
The publication also notes that in the past, Dame Jilly said she worried “that nowadays, if you put your hand on a woman's shoulder, you're about to rape her.”
'But what I find saddest of all is that now some kind pass you made 30 years ago could come back to you, and then your career will be over, your marriage will be over: everything will be over.'
Dame Jilly has previously said that her lothario character Rupert Campbell-Black, who appears in many of her books including Rivals, is being turned into a Disney+ series with David Tennant, Emily Atack and Danny Dyer, and is known for his sexual exploits, 'would be locked up in prison' in the current climate.
She said at the time in 2018 that she feels for those who speak out about sexual abuse and harassment and that it was “horrible, horrible, horrible.”
“But what worries me is that some poor man, at the end of his life, will be dragged out and told that he jumped someone in the year BC,” she added.
Dame Jilly, whose husband Leo died in 2013, said that “on the whole” men were “very kind” to her, adding in the Sunday Times interview: “I love getting wolf whistles. I know men shouldn't attack everyone. But I think men have stronger libidos than women.
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