We Made It, Kid

The autobiography of Jackie McCarthy O'Brien, Irish soccer and rugby star who played both sports for her country, and recently opened up about sexual abuse suffered at the hands of an Irish team coach.

Jackie has led a truly remarkable life, from being born in 1961 to an Irish mother and Jamaican father (whom she never met) in Birmingham to growing up in Limerick. She was put in an industrial school as a baby by a priest for being an "illegitimate" black child and not recovered by her mother until she was five, when she went to live with her and her new father, Mickey O'Brien, whom she adored.

She thought she was adopted until she was 12 years of age - her mother had been told she couldn't acknowledge her. She excelled at sport and played for Ireland in soccer, but having refused to have sex with one of the coaches she was immediately dropped from the team. She went on to play for the Irish rugby team. As a teenager she struggled desperately with her sexual feeling for girls, to the point of attempting suicide.

She got married at 21 before leaving at the age of 30 with her three young children. She still gets on very well with her ex-husband, and today she lives in Limerick with her adopted daughter.