I Choose Elena: On Trauma, Memory and Survival

Aged 15 and preparing for her second Gymnastics World Championship, Lucia Osborne-Crowley was violently raped on a night out. The injuries she sustained ended her gymnastics career, and eventually manifested in chronic illness, which medical professionals now believe can be caused by untreated trauma. Her path to healing began a decade later when she shared her secret for the very first time. Finding solace in writers like Elena Ferrante and Rupi Kaur, she learned how to express her suffering and began to rediscover vulnerability and resilience in the face of a formerly unbearable trauma. Her investigations reveal profound societal failures—of law, justice, education, and medicine—and suggest only empathy can break the cycle of sexual violence. Eloquent, defiant, and honest, I Choose Elena is the story of how a young woman reclaimed her body.