Model who became a man

There is no longer any trace of Katharine's 12-year career as a glamour model. In fact, there is little trace of Katharine herself.

These days, the person who used to be Katharine lives a quiet, self-contained life as a middle-aged man called Raymus.

The name chosen for any new life is always significant.

For Raymus Bowerbank it was especially so, for it would have to signal a break with everything that had happened in 39 years of life.

The choice was unusual but meaningful. Raymus is a Celtic name which means "my soul is not a coward".

And courage was what it took for this mild, gentle man to walk away from years of discomfort over an identity that seemed wrong from the start.

Throughout his life, Raymus had done whatever he could to deny his overwhelming urge to dress and act like a man.

As a teenage girl, the confused transsexual tried to conceal the 48DD breasts that incited cruel taunts at school.

As a young woman, she trowelled on make-up in the hope of convincing the bullies of her femininity.

As a lesbian, she was disgusted with her sexuality and became a novice in an Anglican convent.

And as a model, she went from one extreme to the other as part of her desperate search for an identity that felt right.

Now living alone in a flat in Lansdowne Place, Hove, Raymus distinctly remembers, even as a child, feeling as if he was trapped in the wrong body.

He says: "I used to like Action Man toys and boys' things, never dolls or ribbons or anything like that. When I was four, I knew I wanted to be a boy.

"I would try my dad's shirts on in secret and pretend I had a deep voice. I was convinced that, when I hit puberty, everything would change and I would suddenly become a man."

Instead, Raymus's female body played a cruel joke on him.

He says: "When I was nine, these breasts appeared out of nowhere. Suddenly I had to wear a bra. I was a 36B by the time I was ten.

"I felt like my body was betraying me. I used to get teased by the lads for my breasts and they just kept growing and growing. Adolescence is a difficult time for anybody but for me it was twice as bad."

Although Raymus's body was almost unmistakably womanly, it was also changing in other ways.

He says: "I began to get hair growing all over my face. It wasn't just a downy moustache, it was like a beard. I tried to cover it up with make-up but then I started having to shave every morning.

"For almost ten years I shaved every day. But by the end of the day I had a six o'clock shadow and sometimes people noticed.

"It used to be embarrassing if someone like the milkman or the postman came to the door before I had shaved."

Raymus remembers a day at school when a classmate said, 'Come on lads and lasses - and Catharine Bowerbank'.

He says: "When I was about 16 my mum said, "'It's about time you realised God put you on this earth to be a woman and nothing will ever change that'."

He says: "At the time it seemed strange for her to say that because I had long hair and wore a lot of make-up. I was going out with the girls to pubs and had had a few boyfriends.

"But she still twigged something about me that was different."

If his mum was still alive, Raymus is sure he would have told her about his change of identity. But his dad, who came from a mining village outside Durham, would never have understood.

He says: "He would have disowned me. I think it probably took him passing away for me to think about doing something about how I felt."

A few years after he left school, Raymus took the extreme step of joining a convent in the hope of shutting out his attraction to women.

He says: "I grew up in Scarborough, where we lived near a Pentecostal church.

"Towards the end of my teens I started to get very religious. I believed entirely in the word of the Bible. I thought I would burn in hell if I carried on as I was.

"I joined an Anglican convent in Nottingham. I thought there would be a lot of meditation and prayer time to work out how I should live my life in accordance with the Bible.

"I thought it would cleanse me of my sins. But after a month it began to sink in I had made a terrible mistake.

"We spent all day chopping veg and scrubbing floors. I had hoped it would be a spiritual experience but it wasn't like that at all."

After six months, Raymus, 41, left. He had swung from penitence to defiance.

He says: "I felt something I really believed in had just crashed around my ears. I was very disillusioned. But I still couldn't face the idea I was really a man. I don't know why, because I'm much happier now.

"Instead of removing myself from sexuality, I embraced it. I saw a notice at the local college asking for life models and thought it would be a good way to make money.

"All the way through school I tried to hide my body. Now there was a part of me that wanted to show it off.

"From the life modelling I went on to do glamour work. Throughout my 20s it was my main job.

"I never did any proper pornography so I never felt it was entirely immoral. But as I got older I thought there were more important things in life than flashing my boobs. I found it incredibly difficult to do a job that relied so much on being a woman when I felt so much like a man."

Raymus can't remember the exact moment he decided to give up modelling. But he does remember the sudden tide of disgust that overtook him that day looking through the pictures.

He says: "I was staring at them and thinking, 'Is that really me?'. I almost didn't recognise the stranger in the pictures. I just ripped them all up."

By the time Raymus was in his mid-30s, he began to think about having a sex change. After ten years of electrolysis, his facial hair was still stubbornly growing. It seemed his body was trying to tell him something.

The breasts that had once made his career were also becoming painfully large. At the age of 36, Raymus had a reduction operation.

But the surgery went badly wrong when a minor blood vessel burst inside the breast tissue.

Another operation corrected the problem but the experience made Raymus even more afraid of the surgery he would need to pass for a man.

He put the idea of a sex change to the back of his mind once more. In the end, it was a movie that persuaded him to do it.

He says: "I went to see the film Boys Don't Cry, about a woman who becomes a boy and gets killed when he is found out. It was a life-changing experience.

"At the end I had this urgent feeling that I had to do something. I realised I would be a bitter old woman of 60 if I didn't do something about how I felt right then."

Raymus started by talking to friends he had met while working as a beach cleaner. He had never expressed his feelings before and the prospect terrified him.

He says: "When I actually said it out loud, it was such a relief to talk about it after all those years. I felt as if my life was just beginning, like I was 16 again."

Raymus's GP was sympathetic and sent him to a psychiatrist, who agreed to prescribe male hormones.

Raymus was told he would also be eligible for a mastectomy and a hysterectomy to complete the transformation.

He hasn't decided whether to have the more dangerous, and often unsuccessful, phalloplasty operation.

Raymus is still awaiting surgery but the hormones have enabled him to grow a proper beard and speak with a deeper voice. For the first time ever, he feels happy with himself.

He says: "When I walk down the street and someone tries to sell me the Big Issue or ask me for some spare change, they call me sir now, not madam. You've no idea how good that makes me feel. It's like I'm 10ft tall and walking on air."