I Know What You Are

The moving true story of a little girl with Asperger syndrome, controlled and abused by the one person she called her friend.

Taylor had always struggled to make friends – she felt ‘different’. Taylor never knew her father and her mother wasn’t around much. She just didn’t understand people, and was alone and scared most of the time.

That was until, aged just 11, an older married man called Tom befriended her. She loved having someone who would talk to her, listen to her, a protector. But when he moved away a few months later she was easy prey to the gang of drug dealers and petty criminals who groomed and abused her, using her as a form of currency to appease their debtors and amuse their friends.

Increasingly isolated and desperate, it began to look as though the pattern of Taylor's life had been set – until she started to fight back, determined to build a safe future for herself, however long it took.

About the author

Taylor Edison knows that the ghosts from her childhood will never magically disappear. But the fact that she has learned to live in peace with them has at least stripped them of the power they used to have to haunt her.

For Taylor, it was education that enabled her to escape from her past, and in September 2016, she attained a goal she once thought would always be beyond her reach when she started university. When she graduates, she plans to put her degree and her own experiences to good use by working with children who have even less than she had when she was a child.