My homelessness started years before I left home.

When I was young growing up in Brooklyn, New York, I was about 13 years old and I was coming home from school and a guy asked me if I needed a ride home. 

I told him, “No, I don’t know you.”  But then I got in the car anyway. 

He raped me. Then he took me home and gave me a $100 bill.

When I got home I told my mother and she was very upset.

When my father came home, my mother told him I was raped. He was upset and angry and he beat me. I tried to fight back. We got into a big fight.

Then they took me to the hospital.

Three months later, we moved down to North Carolina and I did not like it there. When I was 16 I ran away from home and went back Brooklyn. When I got there I had no place to stay so I was homeless. 

For the next of 22 years of my life I was in and out of mental hospitals and in and out of jail and prison. If did not have a place to stay I’d do something to get myself put in jail or prison, so I could have a place to stay. This is the truth.

It all started when I was 13 years old.