Woman who was left homeless at 17 after fleeing alcoholic mom’s home where she was sexually abused reveals how she turned her life around to become a successful college graduate and home owner – who now works in one of America’s most violent schools

At 17, Taylor was homeless and alone.

She had witnessed her mother being abused by one of her stepfathers as she cowered in the bathtub until the police arrived.

No one had protected her because one of her mother’s many boyfriends sexually abused her. She had lived in a car because her mother chose alcohol instead of paying rent, and had gone hungry for days because there was no food. In the summer she wore jackets to hide her bruises.

Taylor is one of the success stories in a terrifying epidemic of homeless youth in America.

Despite being taken out of school to care for her younger siblings (her mother had five children from three different fathers) and missing her sophomore year, she was determined to complete high school and become the first in her family are who graduated.

Today, she is not only a college graduate, but also a homeowner and works at one of the most violent schools in Florida.

Her story is in Vicki Sokolik’s new book If You See Them: Young, Unhoused And Alone In America.

An estimated 4.2 million teens and youth experience homelessness in the U.S. each year; 700,000 of them are alone, just like Taylor.

These are teenagers who do not live with a parent or guardian. They are not eligible for foster care because they have left home and have not been removed from the home by child protection. They are not ‘runaways’: they escape abuse or neglect, survive on free school meals, join school sports teams so they can shower and sleep on friends’ sofas, in parks or on the streets.

“My mother had this unrealistic idea that a daughter would stay home and not go to school to clean the house,” she said. ‘My grandmother instilled this ‘value’ in her, which made her a high school dropout.

‘My mother never worked the entire time I lived with her. We lived on child support from my father and then also from the father of my brother and sister. That was actually the only source of our income. We simply went or lived where we could afford to go.

‘When I was in primary school, I saw my mother being beaten up by my stepfather. One of the times he hit my mother, she was pregnant with my brother.

“Many of my stepfathers were arrested growing up. The culmination of these events was the day my older sister intervened to try to protect my mother and my little sister from our third stepfather. I hid in the bathtub with the shower curtain closed while my mother and sister were arrested.

‘No one protected me from the 34-year-old man my mother regularly brought with her who sexually touched me when I was 13.

“I saved my lunch money so I could afford a prepaid cell phone. It was more important to make sure I had someone to call or text if I got hurt or my mom got hurt. Other times I wouldn’t eat for days because we were homeless and living in the car.

‘My mother chose alcohol over having a house. We were constantly living in our car or bouncing around between strange men’s houses.’

When she was 16, Taylor begged her mother to let her move in with a friend so she could finish her eleventh year and still be on track to graduate. It was a short time of stability – of regular meals, of going to school during the day and evening school to work on the classes she had missed. “I felt like I had something fun,” she said.

“But as soon as summer came, my mother said, ‘You can’t stay there anymore. You have to come with me.’ She had taken me from a place of stability because she was lonely. But going with her meant you were nowhere. We bounced around, doubled with people she knew, or lived in her car. As I watched her drinking spiral out of control, the bad decisions became too much for me to bear.”

On the Fourth of July, during a drunken party when her mother tried to force her to have a drink, she snapped.

‘My mother took me outside and told me I had embarrassed her. She pushed me and I pushed her back, and I thought, “Don’t ever lay your hands on me again. I’m done.”

“Then I went to the kitchen around 2am. I passed a room where my mother was sitting on top of a man and having sex with him. She didn’t see me. I couldn’t handle it anymore.

“I found mail with the address on it to find out where we were. I didn’t even know we were in Sarasota. I grabbed my backpack and my cat and started walking down the road. It was my Independence Day.”

She moved in temporarily with her sister and her boyfriend, got a job and enrolled in her fourth high school, still determined to graduate on time.

According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, one in three teens will be lured into prostitution within 48 hours of leaving home. Part of what kept Taylor from becoming a tragic statistic was connecting him with the nonprofit Starting Right, Now (SRN), which helps young people in Florida secure housing, academic support, access to social services, classes in provide life skills and guidance.

Taylor moved into an apartment rented out by SRN and decided to look for the father she had never met.

He was married with other children when he started an affair with her mother, and when her mother became pregnant, he ended the relationship and wanted Taylor to remain a secret. Her mother threatened to expose the affair unless he paid child support regularly.

When Taylor left home on July 4, those payments should have gone directly to Taylor.

“My biological father lived in Minnesota. That was no secret because my mother received a check from him every month with his name on it. I have his last name. But the address on the check was a PO Box, so I didn’t know how to contact him other than my mother telling me he had a car dealership.

“One day I started Googling him at school and found his car dealership. I wanted to call him and tell him that I had run away and that I no longer lived with my mother. That he didn’t have to send her any money. Finally I dared to do that. I called the dealer and said, ‘Hi, can I please speak to… and I said my dad’s name.'”

Taylor told her father that she had left her mother. He thanked her for letting him know. She then asked if he would be willing to send the monthly checks directly to her since it was intended as child support. Her father agreed and wrote down her address. Taylor had hoped to meet in person, but he didn’t suggest it.

“How could he not want a relationship with his own daughter?” she kept asking.

A few weeks later, Taylor received his check in the mail. She was very excited, but part of her excitement had nothing to do with the money. In her eyes, the check was a first step towards a loving relationship.

But the next morning, her father left a voicemail: “I’m so sorry, Taylor, don’t cash that check. I had to cancel it. Your mother found out why I didn’t send her the money and she’s threatening to tell my wife everything.”

SRN intervened and “reminded” her father that if he refused to send the checks to Taylor as required by law, he would face a lawsuit – his choice. Thanks to his reluctant support, she was able to continue her education. But he never made an attempt to meet his daughter.

“To this day, I still have the envelope and the canceled check and letter,” Taylor said. “It’s the only thing I have of him.”

Taylor graduated from high school in 2012 and went on to St. Leo University for her bachelor’s degree. She received her Masters of Social Work from Florida State University in 2018 and is currently a social worker for Hillsborough County Schools.

Years into her career, she saw a story in a local newspaper about rampant violence at what was considered the “third most violent school in Florida.” Gangs of students pushed their peers and teachers into lockers and beat them. Some children were beaten so severely that they fainted. A teacher had broken an arm.

The county was looking for a social worker and, believing her experience and insight could help her interact with the students, Taylor applied and got the job.

She is also a homeowner and provides safety and stability for herself and her cats.

The last time Taylor saw her mother was at a Mexican restaurant shortly after she left. She said she wanted Taylor to come back home, and Taylor said, “What at home?” Her mother was living in a car at the time.

“Then she started talking about killing herself and how she would do it… that she can’t swim. She talked about walking into the ocean and never wanting to come back,” Taylor said.

“I left and never saw her again.”

When you see them: Young, unhoused and alone in America by Vicki Sokolik is published by Spiegel & Grau