Ruby Rose was once falsely accused of being a "baby killer" after an accident in a playground.

The 40-year-old actress was just 15 when she and a childhood friend, who were smoking their first cigarette, found a badly injured child in a playground, but their attempts to help were misconstrued.

Appearing on the Off the Vine podcast: "I saw something on play equipment. I went, 'Oh!' I thought it was a doll hanging.

"As we got close enough, we could tell this was a real baby human -- like a four-and-a-half-year-old. There was blood coming out of his ears, nose and mouth. It was very traumatic."

The two friends immediately tried to find help, as the Orange Is The Black star picked up the boy and they took him to some adults at a house close by.

She added: "I thought I'd saved his life because there was a big deep breath."

The child received CPR while an ambulance was on its way, but unfortunately the boy's condition deteriorated and he died in hospital after being "brain dead for so long".

Ruby was questioned by authorities in aftermath, as she recalled: "The police turned up at my school. [Classmates] were like, 'Baby killer!' I was just breaking down left, right and centre."

The boy's older brother eventually revealed the truth after suffering a dissociative amnesia episode, which is a mental health condition where trauma or stress makes someone forget information.

Ruby explained: "What did eventually happen was the older brother remembered.

"He'd pushed his brother down the slide. The brother had been caught [and he was] trying to get him off the nail."

The older brother then "freaked out" when he saw blood, and ran off with "no memory" of what happened for a couple of weeks.

Ruby added: "He finally had the memory and went back to the police."

The former Batwoman star, who has "studied psychology" as a result of the incident," noted that while she was "cleared", the boy's mother didn't want her at the funeral.

She said: "So, everyone else went except for me."