About

For The Girls I Teach…

When I was at school a school like this , and was your age, I weighed five stone and was depressed and anxious. The school weighed me every Monday morning . I wasn’t eating as I had been and was being sexually abused every weekend by my step father since I was six and was starting to suffer badly . This was nine years in. I had barely any voice, I was sad; hardly spoke; hardly smiled . I’d coped for much longer than one human should and was trying to desperately find a way out ,

I was addicted to cycling up and down the North East coast on my Dads old racer with headphones (a tape !) playing ‘The Eurythmics’ song Thorn in My Side, over and over until I was so exhausted I’d come back and study . I pushed myself hard with study and exercise. This was my escape . Feeling so alone in my secret experiences i started to go to the library looking for teen fiction to read; about girls going through similar situations to me . Maybe to find people who understood without me having to talk , maybe to find how they got out of it so I could copy them and finally be free..

In one of these stories, the female character had used her voice to stop her abuse … She started saying to her abuser “get off my boobs” really loudly and in earshot of the people she’d kept this secret from for months . She spoke these words directly to the offender but it was more about drawing attention. They were words that WOULD draw attention. I could never be that brave I thought reading the book . It took me a while, but from somewhere inside me; instead of remaining quiet and visualising myself somewhere else, I shouted for the first time . I shouted loud enough for my Mum to maybe hear . He stepped back and looked at me confused. For years I’d been his silent plaything . At first he laughed but I realised that the ‘step back’ had given me space. It had worked. “What are you doing ?” he asked, annoyed. I realised this was a question I didn’t need to answer and left.

I’d moved from the flop/freeze mode of response to a verbal challenge/flight mode. And it was having an affect . My voice had created a distance . I kept doing this every-time he ‘started on me’ until his opportunity to get away with his secret assaults had lessened. Hearing my voice have an impact made me feel brave enough to then use it to tell my form teacher at school. A very elderly gentleman English teacher with nicotine stained fingers and teeth but a good heart and an understanding of the importance of words .

Within hours the ball was rolling , I was listened to, the police were called and a nice detective lady took my story and the diaries I’d kept for years . I felt awkward , embarrassed . But I knew, and they knew this wasn’t my embarrassment to own . Sexual violence is a crime against us and the people who commit it are criminals so any consequences, any embarrassment are theirs. Not ours. But the result was it stopped and I was, after nearly ten years of weekly sexual abuse; free.

Over the years I turned my experience into interest in criminality. What makes people commit crime? How do they choose their victims? After a degree in criminology culminating in a dissertation in the ‘Statistical analysis of offence and offender variables in cases of stranger sexual assault for the purpose of informing police investigation’. I obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Psychology followed by PhD. research into how sex offenders make decisions; applying a new model of Decision Making Theory to the study of stranger sexual assault. After teaching for many years; and as a single mum of three I finally got the career I had always wanted. I trained as a police officer on the detective pathway with Humberside Police, learning various officer safety training practices for how to stay safe and de-escalate conflict.

Alongside the above I studied martial arts and became a black belt in tae kwon do; in 2015 winning the British Championship ladies lightweight medal. Attending also other martial arts such as Krav Maga and Win Chung.

To The Teachers Reading This…

My entire life has been dedicated to taking adversity and turning it into resilience . I’m here today to help our young girls do that too. I created the Fortissima Method out of 50 years of being a woman; a victim, an academic, a practitioner of self-defence and a police officer to make our girls’ harder targets to abuse .

Please join me in this mission and book me to talk to your class or year group!