(CNN) "Top Chef" host Padma Lakshmi has penned an essay in which she says she was raped at 16 and remained silent about it.

In an opinion piece published Tuesday by The New York Times, Lakshmi said the alleged incident happened while she was dating a man she met at the Puente Hills Mall in a Los Angeles suburb.

"I worked there after school at the accessories counter at Robinsons-May. He worked at a high-end men's store," she wrote. "He would come in wearing a gray silk suit and flirt with me. He was in college, and I thought he was charming and handsome. He was 23."

She did not identify the man by name in her essay.

I wrote an Op-Ed for @nytimes about something terrible that happened to me in my youth, something that happens to young women every day. We all have an opportunity to change the narrative and believe survivors. https://t.co/pqFt50t4R1 — Padma Lakshmi (@PadmaLakshmi) September 25, 2018

Lakshmi wrote that she and the man "were intimate to a point, but he knew that I was a virgin and that I was unsure of when I would be ready to have sex."

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