She moved to the UK to create Hooray for Hollywood, an autobiographical play in which the children are represented by puppets, while the adults – their parents – are only shown up to waist height, from a child's eye view. Her adult life has been driven by the belief that it is important for survivors of child sexual exploitation and trafficking to tell their stories, in order to make people realise that these aren't crimes that happen "somewhere else, to someone else". A graduate of the puppetry course at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama in London, Raven turned to this artform as a way of telling her story without the gaze of an audience focusing on her directly – something she finds too uncomfortable.
#CHILD MODELS UNDERGROUND PHOTOS FULL#
It was paying our mortgage."Īs we sit talking in a central London cafe, there are two large suitcases on the floor next to us, both full of puppets she has made.
I told myself that my parents meant well, that what I was going through was what was necessary to help my family. "I remember my mother saying things like, 'Oh, they'll never remember it,' like people do when they get their babies' ears pierced. It's before noon but, oh well, just today'. "It's the same way that someone who has a problem with alcohol will rationalise their behaviour – 'It's only this many drinks. Yet from a young age, she had learned from her parents to rationalise and deny what was going on within the family.
Inevitably, as she grew older, Raven's value to her abusers decreased and subsequently the kinds of films she was required to take part in became more extreme and violent. Although he did hit me, he wanted me to stay intact because the less scars I had, the more I was worth." "My father was also quite affectionate towards me whereas he would beat my brother to a pulp. My younger brother was jealous because of my dad's special treatment of me. "My father always favoured me because I brought in the money – I was supporting our whole family. Her father, precariously self-employed after losing his teaching job, was violent towards her younger brother, but since she had become the family breadwinner, Raven was granted a peculiar status. In her teens, the crimes were often perpetrated in Los Angeles, where many film studios provided ample opportunity for the underground child abuse industry in the 70s and 80s. It was to be the beginning of a 15-year ordeal, which saw Raven regularly trafficked by her parents and other members of an organised crime ring from her home in a middle-class suburb in the American north-west to locations all over the US and abroad.
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