When the Pressure is Too Much
This is a sad story in which the pressure to excel in academics was apparently too much for this young woman. However, seeing as how the Father was recently arrested for sexually assaulting two teenagers, there is a possibility that she was sexually abused as a child which has led to this behavior…
If you want to read the original story in its entirety, be warned that is contains a graphic picture. Otherwise, I have pasted most of the original story below.
Miss Yusof at her wedding
With the intellect to win a place at Oxford at the age of 13, Sufiah Yusof should, by now, be carving out a high-flying career for herself.
But a decade after hitting the headlines thanks to her remarkable aptitude for mathematics - and days after her father was jailed for sexually assaulting two teenagers - Miss Yusof has been exposed as a £130-an-hour prostitute.
The revelation completes a sad fall from grace for the family who were hailed the brightest in Britain after Miss Yusof and two of her siblings won university places by the time they were 16.
Calling herself Shilpa Lee, 23-year-old Miss Yusof advertises her body on an internet sex site and operates out of a back street flat in Salford. Yesterday, a friend of the former child prodigy said of her downfall: “It is all desperately heartbreaking.
“With her amazing brain she should be able to make money any way she wants. But instead her life spiralled completely out of control.
“Sufiah has suffered so many knocks in her life. I just hope she can drag herself out of this life she has got herself into.
“She is such a good person and deserves a much better life than this. Her gift really has been a curse.”
[...]
Miss Yusof was pictured as a child smiling innocently outside St Hilda’s College, Oxford, after winning her place to study maths in 1997. But she ran away three years later, aged 15, claiming her parents had placed her under intolerable pressure to succeed.
She was found by police 12 days later working as a waitress at a Bournemouth internet cafe but refused to return to her parents, who had given up their jobs to educate their five children at home.
Miss Yusof was taken in by a foster family and shortly afterwards sent a searing email to her parents, documenting the “living hell” she said her father - a private tutor - had created.
She wrote: “I’ve finally had enough of 15 years of physical and emotional abuse.”
She accused her “controlling and bullying” father of forcing her to work in the cold to aid concentration and added that she never wanted to see him again.
In 2004, she married trainee lawyer Jonathan Marshall, but the couple divorced 13 months later.
In January, the Daily Mail revealed that her father Farooq had been remanded in custody after admitting sexually assaulting two girls, both aged 15.
Appearing under his real surname of Khan, he was jailed for 18 months at Coventry Crown Court last week after a judge heard how he had groped the two girls when he was home tutoring them at maths.
He had previously been jailed for three years in 1992 for his part in a £1.5million mortgage swindle involving several family members.
Yesterday the News of the World described how Miss Yusof was armed with three mobile phones as she welcomed an undercover reporter who was posing as a client at her flat.
The once strict Muslim stripped out of her tiny skirt, leather boots, tight T- shirt and red matching underwear as she detailed her £130-an-hour rate.
She claimed to be studying for a masters degree in economics on a part-time two-year course in London and added: “I’ve got exams coming up and I’m thinking, ‘Oh my God!’.”
Yesterday, her mother, Halimahton, 51, a scientist, said she had no idea her daughter was working as a prostitute.
Speaking from her home in Coventry, Mrs Yusof said: “I didn’t know anything about that. I am not in touch with Sufiah any more. I have got no comment.”
Miss Yusof’s brother, Iskander, aged 12, and sister Aisha, 16, started at Warwick University in 1998, making them the youngest brother and sister to study together at university at the time.
Filed under: Children's Issues
That is pretty sad. Don’t know what else to say.
It is sad, it just seemed that all of that pressure for her to be the best and dealing with her father’s abuse got the best of her.
Sometimes we may have looked at other people and thought how fortunate they have it, but just like Sufiah, do we know what goes on behind closed doors? Too often, we would rather accept imagery instead of reality. We automatically think that they have it made: the spouse, college degrees, the home and the perfect children .What could go wrong? that is the problem we never see the other side of their lives.
I’ve been in a single-parent household since the age of nine. I remembered envying some of my friends who reminded me of Sufiah. They went to private schools, came from two parent Christian homes were the straight A students that were destined to go to Spelman College or Yale University. They were the homecoming Queens/kings etc, but I look at some of them now. At least a great deal of them( I kid you not) are messed up. Some of them are strung out on drugs, are young grandmothers( in their thrities or younger like me), prostituting their souls to the devil and in one case that I have witnessed on the news,
a ” good” guy that went to school with went to prison for armed robbery. Statistically, they were suppose to be on their way to the good life. While they still can change their lives, it’s still a stunner to learn about how they were in past and in the present..
Far as their parents, they are even more shocking. Although many of them have been in their marriages for eternity, they always talked with my mom about them and told her how painful it was for them being in it.Let’s put it this way: It could have gotten some of them seriously hurt,or even killed( and thankfully nobody was). Every time Iooked at them, it never seemed that they showed any signs of stress on their faces like they were facing any serious problems.
Perhaps if all of that pressure was put on Sufiah, she could have very well be on her way to prosperity. Children should able to be children. While there is nothing wrong with wanting children to be academically competitive, it should be encouraged and not forced. When you force a kid to be something that they may not want to do, we’re risking creating problems for them or making hate you in the long run. It is also unfortunate that all of that abuse was taking place in her life. Maybe the problems that Sufiah endured may have been her way of letting people know that something was ailing her.
Hopefully, she is trying to get her master’s degree is trying( or maybe she have) to get off the streets. I would not want to hear about Sufiah being a victim if it.
Salaam.
This is very sad. I wouldn’t be surprised if her father’s emotional and physical abuse had extended into sexual abuse.
Salaam,
So sad………I really have no comment…
I bet the al-Ghuraba’a goons are about to call for her death in light of this.
as salamu ‘alaykum
I commented on this elsewhere, but I just wanted to make a point to those of us that read this that we don’t know the truth and we shouldn’t say anything based on mere suspicion.
As-Salaamu ‘Alaikum,
Be careful with this one. The Daily Mail is clearly a tabloid sensationist rag that seems to pride itself on publishing articles that denigrade Muslims in some fashion or another. How ‘pious’ or practicing of Islam was this girl or her parents ever? We are turning Islam into an ‘ethnicity’ as opposed to a religion as have Jews who have little attachment with Judaism.
Abu Abdillah, before you jump to conclusions, do a search on Google News. It’s also being reported from other sources as well.
Normally I’d agree with you and I was going to jump on the similar claim, but in this case, it’s not necessary.
I read this blog quiet often and this is my first comment. What a sad story! someone should attempt to contact the sister and offer some sort of support if that hasn’t been done already.