Rita Ora: I was 'groomed' as a teenager but don't want people to think of me as a child abuse victim

Rita Ora has revealed she was groomed as a teenager - but insists she does not want people to think of her as a child abuse victim.

The R.I.P singer, who was born in Kosovo but raised in west London, has told how she became involved in her first sexual relationship with a 26-year-old man when she was just 14.

But she said the relationship gave her confidence, adding that she is reluctant to classify her experience as "child abuse".

She made the astonishing confession in an interview with Lifetime TV which was subsequently reported in The Sun on Sunday as it serialised her new biography Hot Right Now.

Commenting on the relationship, she said: “I don’t want to say that I suffered it, because I wanted it.

"I don’t want to say that I was forced to do it.

"I don’t want people to think I was abused as a kid but I was definitely more mature than I should have been at 14.”

She continued: “I was very new to the whole world of a man and a female.

“It’s strange how, once it starts, you kind of feel you can take over the world.

“I felt like I was sexy, I felt like I had a form of respect, I felt like he listened to me.

“Now I know he listened to me because he obviously wanted to have sex with me. I felt good that men fancied me.”

Ora, 24, who has had a string of high-profile relationships with the likes of DJ Calvin Harris and Richard Hilfiger, is mentoring the girls' cateogry on this year's X Factor.

Tonight viewers will watch her select three solo females to go through to the live shows.