TRANSGENDER PIONEER RECALLS HELL OF ABUSE We have to lift stigma of HIV for women or it will stay a silent illness
TRANS activist Rebecca Tallon de Havilland has warned until we lift the stigma of HIV it will remain a “silent illness” preventing women from getting tested.
Rebecca, 65, was Ireland’s first recipient of gender reassignment surgery and the first transgender woman in Ireland to receive a female passport.
Surviving sexual abuse as a child and battling a drink and drug addiction the former model boss who lives with HIV has devoted her life to HIV awareness.
Rebecca told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “I’ve HIV, I’m on my medication but I’m untransmittable.
“I was having a sex change, it wasn’t [called] gender reassignment. Any time you bring sex into it, it causes a stigma.
“People are afraid to be tested, particularly women and transwomen.
“I work in HIV Ireland and with the NHS in London.
“It’s almost like a silent illness as women are afraid to come forward.
“Until we lift the stigma we won’t get 00 transmissions. HIV does not discriminate.”
Living in Granard, Co Longford, with her granny after her parents split up, Rebeccca knew at age three she was in the wrong body.
But it wasn’t until 1991 that she would undergo reassignment surgery after a long road of abuse.
ABANDONMENT
She said: “I always played with dolls. I had to pretend to be a boy, I’ve never had to pretend to be a girl. I hated my genitalia.”
Being sent to an all-boys boarding school in Dublin was “devastating”.
She added: “I was sexually abused by two Christian Brothers for five years. I was 11-and-a-half when it stopped, I felt more abandonment.
“Sadly I had gotten used to it, so I wondered what I had done wrong?
“Of course [her abusers] blamed me. They told me the evil was in me.
“They told me if I said anything I’d go to hell. But even years later I thought it was my fault.
“They said I’d go to hell if I said anything but I felt I was already in hell.
“It was only when all the priests were outed in London that I realised I should have spoken. But I had been crucified in Ireland for being the first trans woman, so I just shut up.”
In 1987, Rebecca styled Johnny Logan for the Eurovision but during this career high she suffered a devastating blow.
She said: “I did the style for Johnny Logan when he won with Hold Me Now and I invented Alternative Miss Ireland.
“But in the same year I got diagnosed with Aids.
“By then I was well on my way to having surgery, I was taking hormones.
“In 1988 it became apparent things were going wrong, by 1990 I was back in London. And in 1991, I got my surgeries done, breast implants, vagina and nose job. I had to sign papers saying I could die as there was no HIV medication.
“I said I don’t care if I die once I don’t die as I was born.”
She told how the press turned on her
I was sexually abuse by two Christian Brothers for five years when I was a small child
and she was forced to leave Ireland. She said: “In the press when I transitioned I went from being the golden boy to the local witch.”
In London she fell on hard times.
She explained: “I was homeless. I hadn’t a pot to pee in. I went from earning £500 pounds a day to being on the streets of Soho.”
She felt Ireland had turned its back on her. Rebecca said: “It happened because Ireland rejected me.
“Nobody would employ somebody like
I watched my gay friends in Ireland and London dying from Aids... I saw death all around me
me at that stage. We were unemployable apart from even having HIV at that stage, I was a trans person. “Nobody would even touch us.” Sex work was “shocking”. She revealed: “It wasn’t on my to do list but it was what I had to do. The art of humanity is survival. It was do this or die and starve, there was no way I could return to Ireland.
“I had nowhere to live, I didn’t even have a passport, I didn’t exist. I was the minority within the minority.”
She turned to drink and drugs to escape her pain.
Rebecca said: “As an escort I got raped by three guys in one night, one after the other. For me the more I drank and drugged the less pain I felt, I was a zombie.
COCAINE
“When I started off I did a bit of champagne and cocaine.
“Peter Stringfellow was really good to us trans girls, we had a model membership so we could go in there for free.” Her faith kept her strong. She said: “Being Irish in London in the 80s wasn’t easy either.
“I was watching my gay friends in Ireland and London dying from Aids and watching my trans sisters being murdered or taking their own lives. All I saw was death around me, I’ve no f***ing idea why I’m standing here today but I never lost my faith in Our Lady. I believe in an afterlife and my Catholic God.
“We’re Irish so we live in the past, there’s nothing we can do about it unless we have a time machine, you’ve got to put it behind you. Otherwise it will f*** up today and tomorrow.”
Life on the streets led to a suicide attempt until full recovery gave Rebecca her soul back.
She said: “When I got sober first I got three months then tried to take my life in 2005 and was on a life support machine in Chelsea Westminster Hospital.
“That was my rock bottom. When I came to, I was raging. I was still alive. I actually work now.”
Her recovery journey helped resolve her trauma.
She said: “I got into recovery doing my 12-Step programme. Sobriety gave me my soul back. I had to dig deep, eventually I forgave everyone.
“It’s pouring a spoon full of poison and drinking it if you don’t forgive them. I was just so glad I didn’t become an abuser. I’ve had an apprenticeship in abuse.
“I tell young people to reach out to me or HIV Ireland or Teni if they are getting hate on social media.
“I’m so glad that the experience of being rejected from Ireland didn’t harden me, but recovery gave me myself back.
“My family say today they still have the same person but my exterior matches my interior.”
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