I was raped after I became a woman
As a little boy, she found TV fame. As a transsexual, she now bravely reveals her darkest chapter...
‘I’d watch Superman but I wanted to be Lois’
LAUREN Harries teeters into the lobby of the London hotel where we meet, her long, gym-honed legs accentuated by vertiginous heels and a skirt so short that it makes the commissionaire blush. A snug cashmere sweater accentuates her large bust and tiny 24in waist.
Her hair – a tumble of blonde curls – and her striking broad smile are the only giveaways of something still more remarkable than her appearance.
For Lauren first sprang into the public eye as a precocious 12-yearold antiques expert called James, who famously appeared on the Antiques Roadshow and Wogan. Dressed in prissy velvet suits and bow ties, he looked and sounded like a polytechnic lecturer in a young boy’s body.
That was in the late 1980s – and the intervening years have not been easy. Bullying and intimidation at school led to depression, agoraphobia, a nervous breakdown and three suicide attempts before Lauren underwent gender reassignment surgery in 2002, which was, she says, ‘like being reborn’.
Even this new life as a woman has been, at times, traumatic, as she explains today in a rare interview.
Within weeks of her sex-change surgery, Lauren was raped so terribly in a London hotel that she required hospital treatment.
Today she claims to have the body and the confident female identity that she had always wanted, and a very different, nascent media career as a transgender television personality and singer.
Eyes closed and tugging nervously at her hair, Lauren, 38, says she is speaking now because she wants to be seen not just as any woman, but as a role model for young transgender people – proof that another life is possible, despite all the difficulties she has been through.
She has spent a lifetime of being unusual. She was only four when her family spotted her uncanny talent for buying pieces of porcelain for pennies in charity shops and at car boot sales and then selling them on for thousands – a gift that led to that brush with fame.
But there were other signs that the youngster was, in her mother’s words ‘special’, and at the age of eight her parents took her to see a doctor. ‘I was small for my age and not growing as fast as my brothers,’ Lauren explains.
‘Looking back I think I always knew that I was a woman. While my brothers Adam and Patrick loved playing with Transformers and trucks, I was happy huddled in a corner paying with My Little Pony and china dolls.
‘I used to watch Superman and wanted to be Lois Lane – but I didn’t know what it meant.’
As the years went by, the problems grew increasingly serious.
‘From the age of 16, I didn’t know who I was,’ she continues. ‘I felt suddenly trapped in a burning building and I couldn’t see a way out.’
She admits to exploring the gay scene only to discover that she was interested in ‘straight’ men. But, as she bluntly puts it, ‘they didn’t fancy me’.
‘It began to dawn on me that I felt like a woman, but I didn’t have any-
one to advise me. I had to figure it out by myself through the internet.’
Lauren found a surgeon on the net and organised the operation, raising money through her media appearances. But the response to the sex change was vicious at times. In 2005, three years after the operation, a gang of men attacked Lauren, her father and one of her brothers in the family home in Cardiff, shouting transphobic slurs.
‘It was horrible and frightening,’ she recalls. ‘We had bricks lobbed through every window of our house and we had death threats. We had about five or six years of hate thrown at us.’
Her personal life was troubled, too, finding she attracted the kind of men who were curious but uncaring. ‘I thought that after the surgery, my life would change for the better and I would find someone to love me. I really believed that I would find my own Superman and he would sweep me off my feet and make my life complete.
‘Society teaches us that no woman is complete without a partner, and I wanted to be complete.’
She was not long into her new body when she was violently raped after befriending a couple in a pub in Chelsea – something she has not felt able to discuss before.
‘It was very traumatic – straight after surgery,’ she reveals. ‘I was lonely and I was in a bar and met a nice-looking man who paid me lots of compliments. He said he had heard me on the radio and that I was very brave. He introduced me to his wife. I thought they were just fans. I ended up drinking with them – I was lonely and vulnerable.
‘At the end of the evening, the man took me back to my hotel and raped me.
‘I never reported it to the police – I never thought it would do any good. I suppose I thought they might think I had asked for it. That was not a very good start.
‘Admittedly, I did not always make the best choices after my transition. I went out on my own to test myself and at times it was quite brutal. But it made me realise that I should concentrate on my career and not be out searching for Mr Right.’
So Lauren returned to live at the sprawling family home in Cardiff with her father Mark, a failed businessman who was jailed for insurance fraud after burning down his struggling shop, her mother Kate, and her brothers Adam, 40, and Patrick, 34.
She describes them as her support group. And if her fashion sense is a little over the top, then a forthcoming appearance on a new Channel 5 show called Celebrity 100 Per Cent Hotter could help her tone things down a little. The programme, which bills itself as a ‘make-under show’, uses professional stylists to help those prone to over-dressing to find a more natural look. However, Lauren is yet to be convinced by the results. ‘I was blindfolded while they did the make-under,’ she says. ‘When I took the mask off, my hair and make-up was fab. But if I’m honest, I’m not sure about the clothes. They made me feel very feminine, but I’ve got gorgeous legs. I go to the gym twice a week and I don’t want to hide them.’ Hence, one assumes, the mini-skirt. ‘Gender change was not so common when I was growing up,’ she continues. ‘Back then, there was no glamorous celebrity representative like Caitlyn Jenner. God bless her for helping to raise awareness.’ Jenner, of course, won an Olympic decathlon gold medal as Bruce Jenner, had six children by three different wives and became stepfather to the Kardashian clan before deciding to become a woman. But Lauren argues that despite her high profile, Caitlyn is not a ‘real’ transgender woman. ‘It really upsets me because she has not been through a true rebirth. She’s not had the anatomical changes, down below, to qualify. Putting on a dress doesn’t make you a woman. She should technically be called a pre-op trans.’
Lauren also claims to have had a fling with comedian Russell Brand in 2006 – something Brand vehemently denies.
‘It went on for six months,’ she claims. ‘He can deny it all he wants, but we both know the truth.’
Sadly, for her, she will play no part in this year’s series, which started last week.
Having been hired to act as a judge and mentor for the current batch of residents, she was quietly dropped last month after she inadvertently leaked news of her participation on Twitter.
‘They said that I might leak stories to the press,’ Lauren says indignantly. ‘It was disrespectful, cold and cruel. I was very hurt.’
Away from her career, Lauren also tells me that she is reviving her efforts to find love.
‘I would like a relationship,’ she says, a hint of desperation in her voice.
‘I want to be seen as a woman and not be judged unfavourably because I wasn’t born one. No one puts themselves though dangerous, lifethreatening surgery just to be different. It is a desperate need that you either fulfil or be miserable.
‘I was bullied at school because I was shy and sensitive.
‘In my teens I was so lost and confused that I tried to commit suicide three times.
‘I don’t go a day without prejudice and discrimination. It would be wonderful if we could reach a stage where people were not categorised by their gender.’
Celebrity 100 Per Cent Hotter starts on Channel 5 on Tuesday at 10pm.
‘We had six years of hate thrown at us’
I never told the police. I thought they might think I’d asked for it
‘I’ve tried to take my own life three times’