Founder

To give you a better understanding about how passionate and driven we are at The Real Project, it may help to understand more about our founder's experiences of relationship and sex education (RSE), growing up as a young woman and working as a teacher and then detective in the Metropolitan Police Service.

Ciara's story

I was born and raised in South London and attended an all-girls private school. I went on to graduate from university and qualified as a teacher, educating 7-11 year olds, before joining the Metropolitan Police and training to become Detective Constable. I worked within a number of departments ranging from reactive and proactive domestic abuse/safeguarding to organised crime.

Studying the law and various relationship-related offences to become a detective opened my eyes to my legal rights as a woman. I very quickly began to realise that my lack of comprehensive relationship and sex education at school (specifically on the law) meant my friends and I had been victims of a variety of criminal offences for years and not known at the time.

At 17 years old, I was sexually assaulted and filmed without consent. I was not aware of the law around consent or image-based abuse and as a result, spent the next eight years filled with guilt, blame and shame. This impacted relationships I entered, my mental health, self-esteem and confidence. The realisation when studying the law that what I had experienced at 17 was not my fault quickly turned to anger at an education system that had failed me.

This was further reinforced when I worked in various domestic abuse units in South London and alongside hundreds of victims who were not aware of their rights, the laws and support available to protect them.

So I decided to combine both my previous teaching and policing careers and start The Real Project: a preventative, educational approach on the law surrounding relationships and sex. I haven't looked back since!