'My son just wanted to be a woman'

THE body of his daughter was still warm when Jim Evans arrived at her flat. He'd received a call from her mother Daphne telling him to come quickly, that Kali might be dead, and with an awful sense of foreboding, he'd made the short trip to her home. What greeted him was a sight he'll never forget.

"She was trapped between the bed and the bedroom wall," says Jim, 64. "Everything was neatly done. There were probably about 180 paracetamol in total, of which probably about 100 had been taken. I was stunned, but not totally surprised."

This tragic scene on a cold December morning - a year to the day since she'd changed her sex - marked the end of a long struggle for Kali Bomar. Throughout her 41 years she had grappled with confusion, feeling she had been born in the wrong body. Worse than this, she had faced intolerance at every turn - the consequence, says her father, of yob culture and a small town mentality.

Going back through her life at his home in Whitby, where Kali also lived, Jim remembers that she was always different. "Mark, as he was then, was a little chubby ginger-haired boy with glasses," he says. "He didn't relate to boys - he was much happier in the company of girls."

Perhaps inevitably, when he turned 11 and started Eskdale Comprehensive School, Mark became the target of playground bullies. "Poor Mark really did stick out like a sore thumb," says Jim. "He was teased and bullied. For weeks on end it was difficult to get him to school."

By this point, Jim had split from his wife and was living in Stockton, working shifts as an engineer. But he was always there for Mark and his other two sons, Christopher, now 40, and Jonathan, 35, going into school to discuss Mark's problems. A source of comfort to both his parents was Mark's close relationship with his nana.

"His nana was a real Mother Earth person and Mark, when he wasn't at school, spent weeks, months and years on end wandering the North Yorkshire countryside with her, discovering nature," says Jim. "That was the person Kali was - she just loved nature and everything about it. Throughout Kali's life, a big factor was being able to go back and revisit those places where she knew she was safe and away from the bullies and constant discrimination - and she did that frequently."

Throughout the conversation, Jim refers to both Mark and Kali, sometimes in the same sentence. When I ask about his view of Kali, his response is unequivocal. "I can tell you here and now that I never had a problem with Kali all her life," he says.

Jim says that even in the early days, he didn't try to change his son's behaviour. "I didn't see any harm in it. I didn't think it was going to affect Mark in such a terrible way," he says. "You're not looking for issues, you're not looking for the worst case scenario. You hope it's just a phase."

But when Mark started college in York, living away from home throughout the week, he became even more feminine. "Mark modelled himself on Boy George with the make-up, the hair and the dress sense," says Jim. "This was Kali because Kali wasn't afraid. Kali was an extremely courageous person."

But Kali's emergence as a flamboyant dresser with the confidence that Mark lacked marked the start of a vicious hate campaign. Wherever she went - especially in her home town of Whitby - she suffered abuse.

"From being 16 years old, there would be verbal jibes and taunts," says Jim. "My sister Sue and her daughter spent a lot of time with Kali witnessing the abuse and the violent attacks. Kali would defend herself - if anybody had the guts to face her, she would confront them - but she was never violent. She wouldn't hurt a fly."

Still in the guise of Mark, Kali found work in a care home, where she was put on permanent night shift. Jim says that despite this, she loved her job. "She loved caring for older people," he says. "Kali was a very special person, well known and well loved by the relatives of all these older people, who loved Kali for her care and devotion."

Yet when the hours took their toll and Kali complained to the management, she fell out of favour. "When Kali started to complain that she felt she was being put upon, there was a reaction," says Jim. "She thought it was discrimination, as comments were being passed about her appearance. I know that hurt Kali. In fact, she became so upset and worried and insulted that she felt she couldn't carry on any longer."

So after 17 years, Kali left the care home. It marked the start of a dark period in her life. "She had left work and had no income and no prospects," says Jim. "Nobody wanted to employ her because of her sexuality. She could no longer pay her way and became homeless."

The one glimmer of light was Kali's friendship with Whitby's Goths. "These Goths are great people," says Jim. "They have really wide open views about a lot of things. Kali found a great deal of empathy and understanding from them. She was happiest when she was mixing with these people."

As the issue of her sex became more pressing, Kali sought help to become a woman. Jim admits that at first, he found this hard. "As a father it was difficult for me," he says. "Poor Kali struggled with it and I was just completely incapable of offering any understanding, any advice or any help. I just didn't understand the problem."

While she found her doctor sympathetic, when it came to surgery, the NHS was unhelpful. "She was given to believe that over a period of time, she would get to the top of the list and have a gender reassignment operation," says Jim.

"For about six years, she was going over to St James's hospital in Leeds, attending assessments and talking to people who had to be convinced that she was taking the right decision. Nothing was happening and Kali was getting really angry and frustrated because people were making promises and telling her she had to be patient while the money was found, then she was told that the money had disappeared. She was devastated."

In the time that followed, Kali attempted suicide. She seemed to be getting over this when two-and-a-half years ago, matters came to a head. "Kali was very close to trying to take her own life again and her mum texted me to say, 'please stop this insanity', and I knew what it meant," says Jim. "I was the only one with enough money in the bank to start the ball rolling, so I did. I went to Kali and said, 'I'll pay for breast implants'."

While admitting he was uncomfortable with this, Jim says he felt he had no choice. "I said to Kali's mum, 'look, if I don't do this for Kal and Kal commits suicide, I could never live with myself'," he says.

Having committed herself to implants, Kali was able to persuade the NHS to carry out a full gender reassignment operation, and on December 18, 2004, she went for surgery at Leicester General Hospital. Yet, sadly, the end of her struggle was not what she'd wished for.

"It was a painful operation and she had some bad after-effects," says Jim. "It was months before she felt reasonable again.

"I think Kali had a relationship that didn't work out the way she wanted. I don't know how deep it was but it was a relationship with a man. That's what Kali wanted - she just wanted to be a woman and to be treated like a woman by a man. I don't think she found that and I think that's one of the reasons she took her own life."

Yet ultimately, Jim believes that by the time Kali had her operation, it was too late - the seeds of unhappiness sown in childhood had grown to strangle her.

"I think Kali thought that by having the operation, she would be accepted, but she wasn't," he says. "I think her point of no return happened a long time ago. She would have won an Oscar for acting, she was so good at covering up her sadness."