DOZ Issue 55 May 2020 | Page 14

Audreia, tell us about your early childhood and the dreams you had as a child. Okay. My parents were what you would consider, Windrush. They came from Jamaica to the UK, and I am the first one that was born here in the UK in 1961. I was born on the bathroom floor; my parents separated before I was born. I didn’t meet my father until I was two years old and then again when I was thirteen. And my mother in the DOZ Magazine | May 2020 meantime, got on with her life. She met a new partner, but unfortunately, that partner, molested me when I was three years old, and he sexually abused me when I was eight. And in the midst of all that, because of the anger that my mother felt towards my father, I was a battered child for ten years, at her hands. Oh, I suffered broken bones and head injuries. But during that journey, I fell in love with art, so I can draw and paint, and I did that since the age of eight. And I love singing, and I love gymnastics. And because my body 14