Ellie Simmonds learns she was branded ‘evil’ and ‘stupid’ before being put up for adoption

Paralympian Ellie Simmonds had viewers of her new documentary in tears last night (6 June), after the doctors notes of her diagnosis just 28 years ago were revealed.

Ellie Simmonds: Finding My Secret Family sees the 28-year-old, who lives with achondroplasia (dwarfism), find her family after being put up for adoption at 10 days old.

Reading the notes from when she was given up, doctors wrote that she’d be ‘laughed at’ and ‘stared at’ by other children, and made her condition synonymous with ‘being in the circus’, as well as associating it with being ‘evil’ or ‘stupid’.