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SOBBING and humiliated, I watched as my GP scanned my body and told me: Well, you look healthy to me."
I'd just spent the last ten minutes pouring my heart out, explaining how I'd been trapped in a hellish cycle of starving myself then binging and purging on repeat - all in the wake of sickening sex abuse.
I was 16 years old and it had taken me months to pluck up the courage to seek help after spiralling into the depths of an eating disorder after my favourite teacher groped me in my classroom and tried to make me follow him into the stationary cupboard.
Despite me reporting it to the school, they'd taken his side and the other kids had caught wind of it and began calling me names in the corridors.
But my doctor told me I didn't tick the 'physical box criteria' - my BMI was normal, I wasn't skeletal and my periods hadn't stopped.
Humiliated, I left the surgery and an already toxic pattern of thinking and behaving became even darker.
Across the UK, around 1.6 million people are battling eating disorders, with anorexia having the highest mortality rate of all mental health disorders - and studies show those suffering with eating disorders are likely to be victims of sexual trauma.
'My world collapsed when I turned 12'
I was always one of those children described as good eaters - I was never fussy throughout my childhood and was never over or underweight.
I was a happy child - up until the age of 12 when my whole world collapsed after a teacher at my school sexually abused me.
One day in year eight, I needed split pins so my teacher told me to go to a classroom down the hall to fetch them.
I entered the empty room to find one of my favourite teachers sat behind his desk.
Shay Pather, also known as Shayen, was the 'cool', young teacher at Kings Langley School- at just 27 years old, he was popular with the students.
He always called me his A-star student and made a huge fuss over me - but despite enjoying his classes, I never had a 'teen crush' on him - to me he was just my teacher, an adult.
After seeing me walk into the classroom, he rolled his chair away from his desk and beckoned me over, pretending to be interested in my work.
As I stood in front of him, showing him my model, he suddenly reached out and yanked my tie - knotting it.
This was a game the kids played at school - we called it 'peanutting' - the aim was to leave the person with the tightest knot.
Confused by his strange behaviour, I let out a nervous laugh but as I turned away to sort my tie, he grasped my upper arms pulled me down onto his lap.
Still in his grip, he pushed my hair to the side and pushed his lips hard onto the back of my neck.
Paralysed with fear, my eyes fixed on the closed classroom door, I froze as he molested me.
I couldn't understand why someone I had trusted, whose job was to keep me safe, was doing this.
Confused, panicked and in a state of shock, I scrambled from his grip and bolted for the door.
He edged around the desks, grabbing at my waist and trying to block my escape.
As I frantically tried to get out of the classroom, he ordered me to go into the walk-in cupboard, where I would be able to find the split pins - but my gut told me not to.
I pushed past him and ran down the hall with tears streaming down my face and my shirt untucked.
He ordered me to go into the walk-in cupboard
Hana Carter
I ran as fast as I could to my head of year's office, and as I looked out the window I saw him scrambling up the stairs after me.
Branded a 'slut'
I told the head of year what had happened, then I went home - confused, violated and exhausted from crying.
Mum took me back to the school that evening for an emergency meeting with my headteacher.
As I sat in front of the headteacher it became immediately apparent that he didn't believe me.
The head asked my mum why I wasn't 'more upset', to which she replied: "I've just spent the last hour calming her down so that she can be here to talk to you."
Pather was arrested, and the days that followed were a blur of police interviews, sleepless nights and inconsolable counselling sessions.
During the investigation he was suspended from school and his absence and whispers of the assault spread like wildfire through the hallways.
But to my horror, as no one saw the incident and it was his word against mine - the police decided to let him go. Suddenly, my abuser was free to roam my school and return to teaching.
He stayed at the school until I left in year 11 and was banned from teaching me or speaking to me.
But as I walked to my tech lessons, he would often smirk at me or try to start a conversation, making little jokes as I blanked him.
I was branded a liar, an attention seeker and worst of all a sl*t by the other kids.
As every school year ended, I would be relieved that one wave of kids who knew my name and my story was leaving to be replaced by a fresh slate of more.
I considered moving school but I didn't want to leave my friends and be the new girl elsewhere, so I stood my ground.
But my private pain only worsened as time went on.
'I'd binge on junk then make myself sick'
I felt like I'd lost myself - and we hit the early 2000s super-skinny became the new thing and Kate Moss was queen.
I wanted to be like the happy women in the magazines, I thought that would make me feel confident again.
My self-esteem had been shot to pieces and I'd convinced myself I was fat, despite only being a size 8.
I began skipping meals and within a few months, I was completely controlled by obsessive thoughts around food and weight.
I would starve myself for weeks on end before giving in to hunger and devouring everything in sight.
During these frantic binges, I'd go to the shops and buy bags of crisps, packs of biscuits, ready-made sandwiches, pastries, sweets, chocolate - you name it.
In the privacy of my bedroom, I'd eat it all in one sitting and wouldn't stop until I felt physically sick.
Then I'd sneak to the bathroom, shove my fingers down my throat and make myself throw up until there was nothing left.
This went on for months, and my parents soon realised there was something wrong when I made constant excuses to avoid mealtimes.
The happy young girl I once was became withdrawn, angry and secretive and they couldn't understand why.
All I thought about was food, the ways to avoid it and how many calories everything had in it. If anything got in the way of my strict plan, I became incredibly anxious and even aggressive.
I'd sneak to the bathroom, shove my fingers down my throat and make myself throw up
Hana Carter
I came up with ways to hide or get rid of food without my parents realising... I would do anything I could to avoid eating.
I single-handedly ruined one Christmas eve with my family by refusing to eat pizza. Id used every excuse in the book not to eat dinner with them that evening, but dad wasnt having any of it.
He finally lost his patience when he caught me taking the cheese off my slices and hiding it in a piece of kitchen roll.
I couldnt tell him that my heart was pounding and I wanted to burst into tears just looking at the food on my plate.
I used to look in the mirror and just hold onto the 'fat' and squeeze myself so hard it would hurt - and I would only allow myself to eat the equivalent of a six-year-old's allowance.
'I was too scared to ask for help'
This hell went on for most of my teenage years and even spilled into my twenties.
I would try to pull myself out of it and eat normally, but then Id spiral back into my old ways, becoming extremely anxious by food and eating - it was a constant cycle.
But I never asked for help, the experience with the GP when I was 16 made me feel that I didn't deserve it.
I was physically harming myself by starving myself and was exercising control over food as a way to cope with trauma. But because I wasnt critically underweight I was pushed to the side, left to get worse.
Eating disorders are more than someones size. They are a mental illness and should be treated as such. Catching it early could save lives - rather than turning people away because their BMI isnt deemed low enough.
'He's abused another underage girl'
At 26, I would be lying if I said I had a completely normal relationship with food and that I loved my body, but Im working on it.
In 2014, nearly a decade after I was violated by Pather, my biggest fear came true - he had done it again.
It was as if someone had picked me up and planted me straight back in that classroom in 2006 - I felt sick to my stomach.
Furious that history had been allowed to repeat itself, I wrote a letter to the school.
I told them how had they have taken me seriously and treated me with the respect and care I deserved, the monster that ruined my school years wouldn't have been able to destroy another girls' life.
To my surprise, I got a call from the police several days later to tell me that the school had forwarded my letter to them and asked me to provide a statement to help with the case.
On October 20, 2014, Shayen Pather pleaded guilty at St Albans Crown Court to the charge of sexual activity with a child by a person in a position of trust.
He was sentenced to just nine months and was put on the sex offenders' register for 10 years - which will be up in four years.
But despite never getting my own personal justice and it not being the longest jail sentence, when I heard the news that he had been put behind bars, I broke down in tears.
After what happened to me, as I watched him arrogantly swan around the school, my biggest fear was that he would ruin more young girl's lives.
The news that he would never set foot in a classroom again gave me a rush of relief - a sensation I'd been yearning after for nine years.
After it got out that he had been jailed, the rumour mill sprung to life, but this time I was on the receiving end of kind messages from people Id gone to school with, apologising for not believing me.
There are times where I wonder how different my teenage years would have been had that day in 2005 not happened - and maybe how different I'd be as a person now.
But I refuse to live in the past and obsess over the 'what ifs'.
What happened to me and the knock on effect was traumatic, but I'm so proud of my 12-year-old self and the strength that she mustered - it's something I still carry with me today.