A 27-year-old female virgin has done extreme things to prove to her family that she is still a virgin after she was accused of having premarital sex.
Shona Knight from Leeds has revealed how she underwent private medical tests at 17, lie detector test on TV and will stop at nothing to prove her truthfulness.
According to her, she had been left with the feeling of committing suicide after allegations surfaced that she had sex after all her efforts to remain chaste till marriage.
She said, “I’m not exaggerating when I say to be accused of sex before marriage has ruined my life. It goes against everything I believe in.
“I have been saving myself for marriage because that is what I believe it and I want the people around me, my family and the people I love to know beyond any doubt I am telling the truth when I say I am a virgin.
“It’s been proven by a medical assessment and by a lie detector so there should be no question at all now but I’ll happily do anything I can to prove I am a virgin because it’s the truth.
“If I don’t do this I will never be able to marry within my culture and have the family I crave so life might as well be over.
“My parents were traditional and I was raised like most travelling girls, with a view to marrying young and settling down to raise a family.”
Normally, women are expected to remain chaste until the wedding night and Knight was over excited to follow tradition like her friends.
Knight called off her engagement when she was 17-years old because she felt she was too young to settle down then.
She said, “People started talking about me and rumours started to spread and grow as a result of me breaking off the engagement.
“Soon my parents heard that people were saying I was no longer a virgin. It wasn’t true and many women reading this will not understand why it bothered me so much.
“But in our community it is totally unacceptable.
“I knew my parents were mortified like me.”
Now, she is so scared that the rumours might damage her reputation and ruin her chances of getting married.
She went to the point of even consulting a solicitor and legal letters were sent to anyone who had repeated the lie.
“The solicitor was shocked. I don’t think they had done anything life it before but it was slander. I knew if I didn’t stop the rumours straight away the consequences would be terrible,” she said.
Her friends abandoned her, she suffered depression and was always anxious due to the decline in her social life following the rumours.
She now relies on antidepressants, battles with suicidal thoughts and has gained more than five stone in weight, which did little to help her confidence.
“I didn’t think it could get any worse but that was the lowest point. My sister knew there was not a shred of truth in it but I felt awful that now she and her family were being dragged into it,” said Knight
According to Mirror UK, Knight insists her parents had always remained supportive but feared that even her own mother Valerie, 64, was starting to wonder if there was any truth behind the rumours.
It got to the point where Knight had to call a national television programme and volunteered to take a lie detector test.
Her mum accompanied her to the show which aired earlier this year.
Her mum revealed her intention to disown her daughter if the lie detector proved that she had been lying all along.
Knight said, “The public’s reaction to that was pretty extreme but it didn’t bother me because I knew I was telling the truth.
“And if the test had shown I had been lying to my mother all these years I would not blame her for disowning me.”
She was attacked few days after the TV show and she believed it was not unconnected with the programme which she featured in.
“What can I do other than try and explain why remaining a virgin is so important to me to help people understand and know the truth,” she rhetorically quizzed.
