The former nanny to Thomas Ravenel's two children has told how the Southern Charm star strangled her, ripped off her clothes and violently raped her as his infant daughter slept nearby in another room.

Dawn Ledwell, known to fans of the Bravo reality show as 'Nanny Dawn', is the second woman to come forward and accuse Ravenel of sexual assault.

Now, in an exclusive interview with DailyMail TV, she has told of the devastating attack, the shame and self-blame with which she has long struggled in silence and how it was only when she learned that she was not alone that she felt able - and compelled - to speak up.

Dawn, now a psychiatric nurse living and working just outside Charlotte, North Carolina, was on a break at work when she saw a tweet from a girl accusing Ravenel of sexually assaulting her mother.

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Dawn Ledwell, the former nanny to Thomas Ravenel's two children, has claimed that the Southern Charm star raped her while his infant daughter slept next door

Florida model/realtor Ashley Perkins has claimed that Ravenel paid her mother Debbie, whom he met on a Tinder date, $200,000 on condition that she sign an NDA concerning the alleged assault in December 2015.

Dawn recalled: 'I was outraged because I found out then that I was not an isolated incident. I had blamed myself, like many victims do, [but I realized then] that it wasn't my fault. It was his fault. He's the perpetrator.'

Dawn is the second woman to come forward and accuse Ravenel of sexual assault

Last Monday Dawn filed a report with the Charleston Police Department and Ravenel found himself at the center of an investigation for Forcible Rape in the first degree.

It is a felony that carries a penalty of up to 30 years imprisonment in his home state of South Carolina.

Local site FITSNews.com broke the story and in that moment Ravenel's image as a caddish TV scoundrel was overshadowed by the possibility of something altogether more sinister - that of a serial sexual predator.

Today Dawn admits she had no idea the impact filing that report would have on her.

She said, 'Since I went to the police department it's like a tremendous release of emotions.

'I can describe it as grief and something that I have suppressed and been struggling with for years.'

Dawn, 43, first met Ravenel, 55, and his then-partner Kathryn Dennis, 25, when their daughter Kensington 'Kensie' was about six weeks old and friends recommended her for the position of private baby nurse.

She claims to have known very little about the former politician whose biggest scandal to date was the drugs bust that cut short his tenure as State Treasurer a decade ago.

But viewers of Southern Charm are familiar with Ravenel's cataclysmic relationship with Dennis. The explosive on-again-off-again and now firmly off-again couple have traded insults and smears on screen and in court.

Last Monday Dawn (pictured with her daughter Adara) filed a report with the Charleston Police Department and Ravenel found himself at the center of an investigation for Forcible Rape

Adara, now 17, remembers her mother's clear distress on the night of the alleged assault. The teen said she took pictures of the marks on her mother's body

Ravenel ultimately gained full custody in a vicious battle over Kensie, now four, and two-year-old St Julien Rembert 'Saint', with Dennis' visitation rights increasing incrementally.

Dawn recalled that from the very start working for the couple was 'stressful.'

'He was running for Senate at the time, obviously he's older and had a baby with a young lady who was barely 22. They just weren't ready for that kind of step,' she said.

The couple split for the first time in October 2014 and Dennis moved out of their rented carriage house in Charleston.

'All the drama did affect me personally,' Dawn admitted. 'I would bring it home with me. He was always criticizing Kathryn for her 'ineffective coping''.

Dennis has since gone through rehab for alcohol and drug abuse.

But according to Dawn, Ravenel also 'had some things he needed to work on - in particular the alcohol'.

'I felt that both parents needed some help and there's no shame in that,' she said. 'But he would sometimes personally attack me for not taking his side [in everything].'

Dawn claims that Ravenel strangled her with her own T-shirt as she tried to escape his clutches and left her with scratches on her arms, back, throat and between her legs

Dawn (pictured here with Ravenel and his daughter Kensie) was known to Southern Charm fans as 'Nanny Dawn' on the show

When Kensie was just seven months old, Ravenel was accused of assaulting Dennis' hairdresser and stylist, Lauren Moser, in a drunken rage.

The charges were ultimately dropped but during the altercation, caught on video, he drunkenly slipped and stumbled into the swimming pool with Kensie in his arms.

Incidents like that, Dawn said, convinced her to stay on in the less-than-ideal work environment.

'I felt, and still feel, that I wanted to be an advocate for the children,' she said.

On the night Dawn claims Ravenel raped her, he had called her to babysit Kensie in his Charleston home while he went out to dinner with friends.

Dawn had put Kensie down and was sterilizing bottles and making her baby food when Ravenel returned home.

'He turned out the lights when he came in which basically shut off all the lights on that floor,' she said. 'I asked him to turn the lights back on because I couldn't see what I was doing.'

'He did not. And without hesitation, he came up to me and made advances, tried to kiss me.'

'I turned my head because I didn't want him to do that. He tried to hug me and my hands were full, I had the baby bottles, so I couldn't push him away but I told him, 'No''.

'I said, 'Why don't you go and lie down?' I really needed to get home, it was about a 45 minute drive from there then and I needed to get home for my own kids.'

Dawn and her husband, landscaper Stan, were separated at the time though the couple have since reconciled.

Dawn was inspired to come forward after Ashley Perkins claimed that Ravenel paid her mother Debbie (pictured together) $200,000 to sign an NDA about another alleged assault

Perkins claims that Ravenel sexually assaulted her mother (pictured) after they went on a Tinder date together

She continued, 'I needed to go upstairs to get my jacket and it had the keys to my truck in it.'

For the first time in the interview Dawn falters. She said, 'I don't really want to go into all the details of what happened. It was very traumatic for me.

'I felt so humiliated especially when he was ripping my clothes off, you know I was a bigger girl back then - almost 100 pounds bigger - and he's torn my clothes off and I'm just so mortified thinking am I going to run outside in this very upscale neighborhood in the freezing January without my clothes on?'

Eventually Dawn was able to get her jacket, her keys and get out.

But she said, 'There are just no words for what I felt at that time.'

In a detail that may prove crucial to the criminal investigation, Dawn said that she called her daughter, Adara, one of her sisters, and her husband as she drove home. She said she told each of them what had happened.

According to Dawn, Ravenel strangled her with her own T-shirt as she tried to escape his clutches. She said she was left scratched and with marks on her arms, back, throat and between her legs.

It was around one in the morning when Dawn finally got home and her daughter Adara, now 17, remembers her mother's clear distress. She took pictures of the marks on her mother's body.

A tearful Adara said, 'I heard her come in and go to her room and I went in there to check on her and she told me that Thomas had attacked her and she basically explained what happened - how he made advances on her, trying to kiss her and how he grabbed her.

'She showed me where he had left scratches and marks around her neck and in between her thighs and her back.

'I was very young at the time and it was just horrible seeing my mother like that.'

'I remember just trying to support her with whatever choice she made whether she wanted to go to the police about it or try to work it out with him.'

Dawn is well aware that the fact that she did not report the incident straight away but continued to work for Ravenel and Dennis for more than a year after that night will be used by some to discredit her story.

Perkins said she finally spoke out about the alleged incident recently as she was not bound to the non-disclosure agreement her mother signed in summer 2016

Photographs provided to DailyMail.com show Debbie Perkins' marks on her wrist after the date

Perkins has claimed that Ravenel assaulted her mother in the nanny's room of his home

But the truth, she explained, is that she was conflicted, ashamed and fearful. She points to research by forensic psychiatrist Dr Barbara Ziv - the expert witness called by the prosecution in Bill Cosby's trial last month - that shows that the vast majority of victims of sexual assault behave almost completely counter to the way people might expect.

Most know their assailant. Most do not immediately report. Most continue some sort of contact partly in an effort to make sense of what happened, partly out of an inability to recast a friend as a foe capable of hurting them so badly.

Dawn also said she was afraid of Ravenel. She explained: 'I knew his tactics and what he does to bully other people. He might hire private investigators to follow people and put GPS trackers on their cars and do that to family members. I was afraid of all that.

'Also being a participant on a reality TV show where they have the ability to use your personal life as a platform, I didn't want my grieving and my trauma to be used as a platform for their show. I was worried about being re-victimized.'

Asked if she told anyone on the production company about the assault, Dawn said only that she could not discuss that for legal reasons.

She doesn't remember exactly when she next saw Ravenel, only that when she did he 'voluntarily' apologized to her for attacking her.

She said, 'He saw that maybe I was afraid of him because I was brining people to work with me and he said, 'Listen you don't need to bring chaperones.

'I'm really sorry for attacking you. I feel really bad about it and it will never happen again.' And it's true. He didn't ever do it again.'

'But what had really hurt me was that when I was finally able to tell Kathryn he recanted. He denied what he did and what he said and he victim shamed and bullied me.'

Dawn claims that after the birth of Saint in November 2015 it became apparent to Dennis that something was wrong.

She said, 'I was crying a lot and having headaches and I was staying with her at her home to help her and she just did not understand. She was like, 'Why are you so upset?'

'And it was like a team of horses that had to drag it out of me because you always wonder, how will she respond? Again, is this going to be exploited and used on a television show?

'But I told her exactly what happened and she was really shocked. She really hated it for me. I think she really believed me.'

But when confronted by the mother of his children Ravenel denied it all, Dawn said.

A source close to Ravenel told DailyMail TV that the Bravo star is 'at a loss' over the allegations

'I know exactly what he said because he butt dialed me when he was talking to various people about me.

'I'm overhearing him saying, 'Oh I would never be with her. She was fat and disgusting. She's pathetic.' He said that I wasn't a good nanny and couldn't get a job as a real nurse and that I was involved in some sort of money grab scheme like nannies out in LA who come up with false allegations against rich white men to blackmail them or cash in.

'And I was so hurt. I will say that that hurt me worse than any physical or sexual assault he could ever do to me.'

According to Dawn, following Saint's birth, Ravenel employed a second nanny and reduced her hours to the point where the already erratic role was unsustainable.

She said, 'All this bullying was going on, the stress was so unbelievable. At one point I ended up having to go to the emergency room with chest pains and they did an MRI and all these different things to make sure I wasn't having a heart attack.

'I [finally] said there's no way I can continue to work in this hostile environment. And so I ended up having to resign.

'I know people will say, 'Why didn't you walk away sooner?' but first of all my focus was on the children and you can see how beautiful Kensie and Saint are.

'The second thing is when you're working for someone who's in the public eye and has the capacity to ruin you, you're afraid.

'I beat myself up over it for a long time. I really did.'

Dawn quit in December 2016. She said that she received a minimal severance pay but that she refused to sign an NDA as requested by Ravenel.

She said she didn't want to lose her voice as an advocate for the children.

The notion that she is somehow out for money is one that clearly enrages Dawn today.

She said, 'His fortune will never make me fortunate. I do no need his money to fulfill my life. What I do need is justice. I need healing. I need help and support.'

Asked if she wants Ravenel to go to prison Dawn wobbles. She is angry, she said, but she is still beset by a wealth of conflicting emotions.

She explained, 'I remember all the good times like being out on the boat with the baby and stuff like that and I remember the times when he would be on his best behavior and it's very difficult because on the flip side there's the rage and the alcohol use and the victimization of women.

'I'll be honest with you that's where I need more help. I need to go to therapy and figure all that out.'

She is clear, however, on one point. Ravenel should no longer be part of the Southern Charm cast.

A source claims Ravenel is staring down the barrel of bankruptcy, as finances for three major projects may not be extended while the threat of criminal charges lingers

Ravenel is pictured here with the season five cast of Southern Charm. Dawn is hoping he will get booted from the show following her allegations

She said, 'Thomas shouldn't be on television. I mean should we put Cosby back on television?'

Meanwhile she revealed that she has not been contacted by any representative of the network or the show and that she finds their inaction, 'sickening.'

Right now Dawn is gathering what evidence she can in the form of emails, text messages, phone records and pictures to give to the police.

She has been told that Ravenel will be interviewed but, in her heart of hearts, doubts she will have her day in court.

Instead, in the spirit of #MeToo, Dawn hopes that by putting her story on the record she might help another girl come forward, perhaps one with a better chance of bringing a successful criminal prosecution.

Because she is convinced there are other women and if her story can help one of them, she said, 'that's the imprint I want to make.'

A source close to Ravenel told DailyMail TV that he is 'at a loss.'

The source said, 'He doesn't understand why Dawn would say these things. To bring a claim of forcible rape - I don't think she could have picked a worse charge to level at any person. There aren't words to express what he's going through right now.

'This woman was a devoted caretaker to his and Kathyrn's children. He thought of her as part of my family.

'I think we're all struggling to make sense of how somebody can just walk into a police station, fill out a form, without anything to substantiate the claims and suddenly a man's life is hanging in the balance.'

According to the source Ravenel is staring down the barrel of bankruptcy, as finances for three major projects may not be extended while the threat of criminal charges lingers.

They explained, 'This isn't just about him. Everything Thomas does is for his children's future and security and this puts all that in jeopardy.

'It's a kind of torture. The longer this drags on the more damage is done in the name of allegations that are completely untrue.'

They added, 'Thomas's attitude right now is, 'Charge me or clear me' because right now in effect he's being publicly nailed to the cross, prosecuted and judged without any due process at all.'