WALKED INTO THE BATHROOM TO GIVE MY HUSBAND A KISS.. THEN..

20 August 2006
EXCLUSIVE: I WALKED INTO THE BATHROOM TO GIVE MY HUSBAND A KISS.. THEN NOTICED HE HAD GROWN A PAIR OF WOMEN'S BREASTS
SEX-SWAP DAD OF TWO

By Grant Hodgson

SHE hadn't seen him naked for a while - but when she walked in on her husband Stephen in the bathroom, Catherine Everett couldn't fail to spot something very different.

He still had a full head of hair. He was still ruggedly handsome.

But he certainly wasn't the man she married.

He had grown a pair of breasts.

In fact he was admiring them in the mirror at the very moment she walked in to give him a kiss.

Catherine says the 41-year-old pizza restaurant manager had decided to have a sex change - without telling her.

"I couldn't believe what I was seeing," says Catherine, 26. "He was standing there examining his breasts - they were small, but there was no mistaking them."

To make matters worse Catherine was expecting their second child when she discovered Stephen's secret. They had not had sex since she became pregnant, so she had not seen him without his clothes.

She claims he then confessed he was taking a course of female hormone pills. He also revealed that before they married he had lived for a while as a woman.

"I felt utterly betrayed," says Catherine. "We had a son and a new baby on the way."

Reeling from the revelation Catherine from Leatherhead, Surrey, tried to come to terms with Stephen's feminine side.

"He started wearing a dress to pick the kids up from school - everyone knew what we were going through," says Catherine.

The couple met 11 years ago, when they both worked at the same pizza house.

Catherine was just 16 - and fell head over heels in love. "There was nothing feminine about him," she says. "He was a very good-looking bloke. He was very flirty and funny and I knew he fancied me straight away.

"He was very much a 'lad' - he loved going out with his mates.

But he was very romantic too.

He bought me flowers, wrote love letters.

"Sex with Stephen was completely normal, tender and loving."

They married in the spring of 1999. All was normal and they delighted in the birth of their son, now seven. It was when Catherine discovered she was expecting her daughter, now five, that she started to notice the first signs of a different side to Stephen.

"He bought flamboyant designer clothes, which he hadn't done before, and he went off sex completely. He then started wearing pyjamas to bed."

One day she wanted to talk to him "about something completely trivial" and also thought of giving him a kiss. "So I just opened the bathroom door.

He was standing there naked and he had small, round breasts. I immediately went into shock - I think we both did. We stood there just staring at each other.

"I couldn't think straight, my head was all over the place. Later that night we tried to talk about it.

"I kept thinking, 'How could I not have known?', but then I thought back at how strangely he had been acting and it all seemed to fall into place."

A few days later, speaking to one of her husband's relatives, Catherine discovered Stephen had lived as a woman before.

"They thought that once we were married his feelings would 'blow over'. I felt used. I cried for hours."

For the sake of the children the couple agreed to try to carry on living as man and wife.

But Catherine said: "Stephen tried wearing men's clothes but he'd always go back to his dresses, high heels and handbags.

"We would go out with the children and people would shout 'Freak!' When he took the kids swimming he wore a bikini. I knew we had to divorce."

The split was finalised last January after a bitter custody battle. Stephen - who now calls himself Stephanie - is due to have a full sex-change operation next year.

Speaking at home in Dorking last night, he denied deliberately starting the transformation during the marriage.

"It was never intended it to happen until after our divorce," he added. " My upmost priority is and always will be the care and well-being of our children.

That is all I am prepared to say."