Debra Maria Flint was born in Birmingham, UK, to an agnostic family. She converted to Catholicism at twenty-two years of age in the wake of Vatican II. She lived in Greece from her late teenage years into her early twenties and speaks and writes fluent Greek.
On her return to the UK, Debra studied theology as a mature student in Oxford. She met her late husband, Bill, at that time. They moved to Somerset after their marriage. Debra later went on to qualify as a nurse. She also obtained a bachelor of science in health, with safe-guarding children and adults as her specialism. She has postgraduate qualifications in management and investigative research.
Debra spent over twenty years safeguarding children and vulnerable adults. She managed both children’s homes and care homes and later went on to work as a social care inspector for Ofsted. She was the first Ofsted social care inspector in England to represent Ofsted in court when a company failed to have robust safeguarding practices in place. Ofsted eventually won the case.
Debra was married for twenty-nine years. Her late husband died in 2014, and she decided to follow a consecrated path within the Catholic Church. She spent six years exploring the new and restored forms of consecrated life before experiencing difficulties in 2020.
Debra’s first book, Look Back to the Future: Consecrated Women in Britain 597 AD to Date, was published in April 2021. No Place for a Woman: The Spiritual and Political Power Abuse of Women within Catholicism is her second book. Since writing this book, Debra has sadly found it necessary to leave the Roman Catholic Church and is now serving as an ordained deacon within another Christian denomination which has apostolic succession through the Old Catholic Church. Debra still considers herself to be part of the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church.