Elodie would like to see help for care leavers and better recognition of gender and sexual identity issues
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Participants have given us permission to share their experiences.
Elodie has had to deal with the complex challenge of being born intersex.
She believes this made her vulnerable to the sexual, physical and emotional abuse she suffered in her early life.
Elodie explains that she was born with a reproductive and sexual anatomy that did not fit the standard definitions of a female or male. From birth, it was decided that she would be raised as a boy. She made up her mind as a young adult to live as a woman.
She says it was very difficult for her growing up as a boy – she was very ‘pretty’ and had feminine features. Added to this, her family life was chaotic and dysfunctional. She suffered neglect and violence that she finds hard to talk about, but describes it as like ‘something from a horror film’.
Elodie was taken into care when she was about 12, and ended up in a unit where she was targeted for sexual abuse by a predatory staff member, A. She describes the abuse as being like sexual torture – it was sadistic and very painful. Sometimes A brought another boy into her room and made them perform sexual acts while he watched.
Exploitation and criminal activity was endemic in the unit, with adults arriving to sell drugs to the children, and taking them out for the night and sexually abusing them. Elodie remembers being taken out, plied with alcohol and drugs, and raped. She describes the contradiction of feeling ‘horrible’ about these experiences but also craving the attention she got from them.
When she was old enough to leave the care system, she found employment and care leavers’ accommodation, but was left with little support and was bullied by other residents for being gay.
She became homeless again, surviving by sometimes staying with a man, and for a time she was a sex worker in a brothel.
Elodie has struggled with her mental health, addiction and physical conditions related to stress. When she was in her 20s, she discovered that she had been born intersex, and this was an additional challenge for her to deal with.
Looking back on her time in the care system, Elodie says she did not realise she was being sexually exploited. A’s behaviour was not challenged. But, she adds, some of the staff were ‘good people’ and she finds it very hard to think that they knew what was going on.
She also says she knows her social worker was overworked, but she feels very angry that the people who were supposed to look after her failed to protect her.
Elodie would like to see improved support and resources available for care leavers, and better recognition of gender and sexual identity issues for young people.
She has thought about reporting her experiences to the police but she worries that her mental health would be held against her.
Elodie finds comfort in working for a charity and helping others. She says ‘I heal myself by healing others’.