Eleanor Neale

Actually, I said man, I don't know how old they are.

They probably were boys but still.

Anna was just absolutely traumatised.

She ran home from that Halloween party crying and she went to her mother and her mother said that she just couldn't console her daughter at all.

She just had to hold her

while she sobbed, which is just heartbreaking.

As soon as I read that, as soon as I read her mother's quote about how all she could do was just hold her daughter as she sobbed, like, my heart just breaks for her.

She was 13.

To have your innocence broken in such a way at 13 when you're so naive and so vulnerable and so shy, like, I just want to give her a big hug.

Her parents helped her report this incident to the police and the police ended up finding out who the boy was.

They went to his house and they gave him a caution.

but that's as far as that went.

And this incident was a pretty big blow to Anna's already very fragile mental health.

That's one thing I haven't mentioned yet is that Anna was really struggling mentally in her teenage years.

She was very depressed a lot of the time and on occasion she even found herself self-harming to deal with these feelings.

As soon as her parents found out about this, they tried to help her in every way that they could.

They got her into the mental health services, got her a therapist.

They wanted her to be happy.

It took Anna a little while to come round to these counselling sessions.

I mean, she was such a shy girl that going in and speaking to a stranger wasn't gonna be easy for her.