Survival Instinct

Gerritsen Beach was a community where unreported sexual crimes were like a disease. You have people who are three generations in, and everybody knows each other and everybody is friends. The person who raped me is close friends with a lot of people in my family. I had this shameful fear that I couldn't tell my mum what happened because Grandma would be upset when she goes to Mass.

So here I was, 13 or 14 years old, raped by someone who was nearly 30, and he's still out there because I spent so much time being afraid of it. As I'm growing and telling my story, I'm learning about how this happened to so many other people in the neighbourhood. People are being taken advantage of and are afraid to speak out because they are afraid of what the other people in the neighbourhood will say.

That was a big factor in wanting to get my daughter out of there and not wanting to have her exposed to the same cycle that's been going on for years, with the same kind of men getting away with it. As far as it affects me in boxing, I want to say that it doesn't, but I think that it created something inside of me that wants me to fight for something. All of the experiences in my life — not just the rape, but being homeless, not having money, struggles with my ex, and growing up the way I did — it all makes me want to fight as hard as I can.

Bikini-Free Zone

If you look at the history of all the successful female fighters, you'll see that many were in Playboy or they're half-naked. I'm not knocking those girls, because you gotta do what you gotta do, but for me to put on a bikini or to get naked in a magazine is not who I am. I really take pride in the fact that I have made it as far as I have just by being who I am. Society says that if you are a female fighter, you have to show that sexy side, because that is the only side that people like — it doesn't have to be like that.

I think that there needs to be a drastic change in female fights that they put on TV. [If] we don't get put on TV, we don't make any money. You have male world champions making six or seven figures a fight, and then you have a female who maybe makes $5,000 (£3,750). It's not even a tenth or twelfth of what these guys make, because they are closing the door to television on us. So what has to change? I don't know. The networks and promoters are just saying no, so it's hard to ask what to do. [But] when you appreciate the sport, you can learn to appreciate who's doing what and not girls doing one thing and boys doing another.