I Choose Elena

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.

"Startlingly intelligent, disturbing, profound and moving, I Choose Elena shows us that the #MeToo movement has grown roots, and that for survivors of rape and sexual assault, the revolution is just beginning. Osborne-Crowley gives us darkness wrought in light and the hope she offers is as palpable as it is hard-won." April Ayers Lawson, author, Virgin and Other Stories

"Beautiful and sad and moving and too real in the finest way." —Irish Times

Lucia Osborne-Crowley is a journalist, essayist, writer, and legal researcher. Her news reporting has appeared in ABC News, Guardian, Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, and Women’s Agenda. Her long-form writing has appeared in The Lifted Brow and Meanjn.