When Mrs Pankhurst came to her aid, he sexually assaulted both women. A man entered the establishment, attacking her friend. She then moved home to Melbourne, and while working at a brothel in the city, she and another co-worker were brutally raped. 'Sandra went to Kalgoorlie and worked in brothels - it was a normal thing for women to do a stint in the area because they could just focus on work - all the workers had to remain on site and couldn't mingle with the rest of the town.'
She had to leave her old job because she was transitioning, and not long after she found herself working in Melbourne's drag and burlesque scene. She then entered the sex industry working in brothels across Australia. 'She was one of the first patients in the early 1980s to have gender re-assignment,' Mrs Krasnostein told Daily Mail Australia. Mrs Pankhurst made the heartbreaking decision to leave her family and her life as Peter. Mrs Pankhurst made the heartbreaking decision to leave her family and her life as Peter (pictured left and right on her wedding day) 'She had limits on her food, by the time she was 17 she was so malnourished her teeth fell out.'
'She was adopted at a few weeks old into a very abusive, alcoholic family in Footscray in the early 1950s, forced to live in a purpose-built bungalow out the back, purposefully excluded,' Mrs Krasnostein told Daily Mail Australia. Sarah Krasnostein, the author of The Trauma Cleaner, followed Mrs Pankhurst through her daily routine of cleaning the most confronting and putrid scenes imaginable, while also chronicling her early years that shaped her into the 'brave woman' she is now.
Her life, though, was filled with pain and heartbreak, growing up in the rough suburbs of Melbourne with a highly-religious upbringing and struggling with the torment of not fitting in and not knowing who she was. Sandra Pankhurst has worked as a trauma cleaner for more than two decades after noticing a void in the market after becoming one of Australia's first female funeral directors. A transgender woman who was adopted into an abusive family, forced to live a malnourished life in a backyard shed and worked in brothels across Australia has found solace in the most unlikely of professions.
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