To be honest, ten years ago when Daisy Asquith made the first documentary about a 15 year old living in Brixton called Kimberley – which won Asquith a BAFTA – I don’t suppose it occurred to anyone – other than Asquith – that perhaps there would be a follow up film ten years on. But, if it’d been announced at the time, I’d have put about a million pounds on it that when ten years had gone by, Kimberley would’ve had several more children, by several different fathers and would be an overweight eater of junk food, living on benefits and a committed daytime TV watcher; in other words, someone Jeremy Kyle might have on his show. Either that or an underweight junkie who’d had several kids taken into care.

I would only have been in part right… Ten years ago, Kimberley was a ‘typical’ Brixton teenager; loud, opinionated, and usually with the wrong or ill-informed ones, from a broken home and worse yet, she’d been the victim of a rape at just 12 years old. She was relatively unintelligent academically but she was streetwise and at that time, despite being what I would consider gobby, stroppy and a girl with a pretty bleak future, she expressed a determination not to end up pregnant young like her mother and sister had done, but quelle surpise, that’s exactly what happened… Read more & comment »