Washington Post Online: Gay Ballou senior survives ordeal

By Bill Turque

The new Washington Blade tells the remarkable story of Ballou STAY senior Kadeem Swenson, forced by his parents to leave his Waldorf home two years ago when he came out as gay. He lived in abandoned apartment buildings in Congress Heights for a time while continuing to attend school.

Read it here.

Here is an excerpt from the remarkable story:

With some financial support from his grandmother, he managed to get through his junior and part of his senior year at Ballou while hiding the fact that he lived a secret life as a homeless person. He stayed most of the time in a debris-strewn abandoned apartment building a few blocks from his school with no electricity or running water.

“I never really told anybody because I didn’t want anybody to have pity on me,” he said.

In what school officials and LGBT homeless youth advocate Earline Budd call an extraordinary story, Swenson told the Blade how he maintained a positive outlook and an overarching desire to succeed at school under the most trying circumstances.

“I want to go to college and study business,” he said. “And I don’t want to just run a business I want to own it.”