A genuine account of someone who found themselves homeless

(Reported by Richard Frazer)

It is important to note that being homeless does not necessarily come from bad living or from not caring. Often and usually the person has simply fallen at each hurdle that is in place to catch those that slip through the system. Many of these people are intelligent capable people who suffer a sequence of bad luck and simply run out of resources and support to pull their situation around until it is too late.

Here is such an account sent to us from one of our page contributors who chooses to remain anonymous. The period of time homeless was short but the effects last a long time:

The Account of Events:

My mum re-married when I was 11. I didn't get on with my step dad. I suppose he was OK, he's not a bad person but he had a temper on him. Within a short while he was being violent towards me. The violence stopped when I was around 14. It was never talked about or acknowledged to have happened as far as I am aware.

I probably wasn't an easy teenager but I wasn't as bad as many I don't think. I wasn't aggressive, taking drugs, involved in crime or anything like that. In fact I had become a born-again Christian aged 15 and everything revolved around that for me. Shortly before I turned 18 I discovered boys and drink and fell from grace somewhat. There was another episode of my step dad being violent towards me. I turned 18. 5 weeks later I was due to sit my first A level exam. on the Monday. I went to the pub with some friends on the Saturday night. It was cold so after we left the pub at closing time I stopped off at my house to get a coat. My step dad went nuts and refused to let me leave again (my mum was working nights at the time) and he held onto my arm and wouldn't let me go. After a tussle I got away but he said I couldn't come home anymore. I didn't take it seriously but I was scared of him and stayed at a friend's house that night but had to leave early in the morning so his mum didn't get annoyed. I went back home, crept in the back door and my step dad started screaming and shouting at me and told me to never come back. So I left with nothing.

Some hours later I was able to meet up with some friends. One of them was a boy slightly older than me who I had had a "petting session" with several weeks before. He was keen on me but I wasn't so much on him as I found him intimidating. He took me back to his parents house where he lived, and I stayed there a week sleeping in his bedroom in his bed with him. It was that or the streets and I was terrified. He kept pressuring me into doing sexual things with him, saying that I was obliged to because he had helped me and that he would tell his parents to throw me out if I didn't do what he said. It was only for a week thankfully but it seemed the longest week of my life. I was scared of his moods and temper, scared of what was happening between us, scared to say no in case I was thrown out as there was nowhere else to go. Needless to say I failed my A levels. In fact, the first one which was the day after I was thrown out, I cried all the way through the exam.

Thankfully, there was a somewhat happier ending. Someone loaned me the money for a deposit on a tiny flat. My boss from my Saturday job gave me a full-time position at £60 a week (before the minimum wage came in). It was a pittance but I managed just about.