OutBoise Magazine March 2015 | Page 23

NEWS   |  OutBoise Magazine  |  23 March 2015 | Issue 5.2 | OutBoise.com The bullying continued on a daily basis. She said that at the age of 11, she thought about suicide often. She even had a date planned and knew how she was going to kill herself. At this point in her life her mom’s problems were overshadowing the home. She reached out, called an aunt who reached her father and Tim came back into the picture full time. He had lost his job and was looking for work. He eventually decided to take a job in Boise. He explained that before the move to Boise, they would just keep his daughter’s condition quiet. His anxiety was high and he said that while he was injured and unable to work full time, he started to research what it meant to be transgender. He was terrified with what he found. Statistics showing the story of something he knew he didn’t want for his child. According to a report done by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force and the National Center for Transgender Equality, statistics of assault rates on transgender people are as high as 78 percent. According to a study done by the Williams Institute, suicide rates are as high as 45 percent for the age group of 1824. Not a lot of information is available for those under the age of 18. Those same statistics show that often transgender people are rejected by health care workers, family and job. Many end up living in poverty and have experienced homelessness.