Their only child was able to keep them at a distance on the grounds they did not accept the teen was transgender – an identity the parents say the teen later abandoned.
However, the couple allege that while attentive to their child’s gender identity, various care professionals failed to adequately respond to the threat from a long-standing eating disorder.
[T]he teenager was found dead in a locked motel room, about an hour from the parents’ South Island home.
Vanessa had just turned 17.
There is no doubt of the immediate cause of death: cachexia (extreme wasting), due to anorexia nervosa, according to the post-mortem report.
An only child, born to her parents late in life, Vanessa was “dearly hoped for, least expected”, Catherine said.
However, the family’s happy, ordinary life was shattered when Vanessa was sexually molested at the age of five by an older child at school.
The Rape Crisis counsellor who helped the family through the ghastly aftermath warned her parents that puberty was often a trigger point for children who had suffered trauma.
“And that’s exactly what happened to Vanessa. She was nearly 12, just at the start of puberty, when anorexia hit.”
The teen also suffered from obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and was diagnosed with autism at 15.
At high school, she was also introduced to the concept of gender diversity and at some point in 2021 became non-binary.
However, Catherine said immediately after a messy break-up with the boyfriend, Vanessa started identifying as a boy.
Vanessa texted her parents that if they would not accept her as a boy, it was better they did not see each other at all.
Family Works, a service run by Presbyterian Support, found the teenager emergency accommodation.
Vanessa’s parents both saw her for the last time on 1 January, 2023 – but only at a distance.
“She was wearing a puffer jacket in the middle of summer. She wouldn’t let us near to see how thin she was, using the excuse ‘You don’t accept I’m a man’.”
Catherine said it was not only the 16-year-old who excluded them from her life, but also the small army of professionals in health, education and welfare agencies, who had assumed responsibility for their child’s care.
However, her parents said subsequently, Vanessa phoned her father and then her mother to say she was “seriously questioning the ‘gender identity thing'” and wanted them to know she was indeed their daughter.
They were hopeful their child could be returning to them, but that was not to be.
Catherine later heard the teenager had asked the motel manager for a walking stick and a hose to drink water from the tap without getting out of bed.
“The manager said she thought it was weird but did nothing about it.”
So Catherine rang Vanessa’s GP, who organised “a welfare check”.
When Catherine rang the motel again, the phone was handed straight to a police officer.
“I knew immediately that Vanessa had died.”
Source: Teenager starves to death alone in emergency accommodation | Stuff