I have held my silence until now. This is the first time i have told the whole story of the abuse i suffered at the hands of my alcoholic step father.You may this true and honest account distrubing and upsetting but this was my life as a child

One hot summer's afternoon, two abandoned infants are brought to Trisha and Mike Merry's door, forlorn and afraid.Their mother walked out on them. (They don't remember her.) Their grandmother tried, but couldn't manage them. And now their young father has given up on them too.These cast-off kids desperately need somewhere to live and a family to love them. They've come to the right place.Trisha and Mike welcome them into their home a...

'Over and over again he warned me he’d kill me if I told anyone. I was completely isolated.He made sure of that.’Mary was a shy ten-year-old when her new dad, Sean, came into her life. From the very beginning he seemed to pay her special attention - praise for good behaviour, compliments about her clothes, help with school work. Mary trusted him. Then he started touching her. When she was twelve, he raped her.Sean continued to abuse Mary for twenty years and...

'If you say anything to your mother, I'll tell her it was your brother. And then he'll be locked away in prison forever because of you.'Zara's stepfather, Hassan, mercilessly bullied her brother and sister. But at just seven years old Zara knew she could never tell anyone about what Hassan was doing to her.For the next nine years, she kept the terrible secret, until eventually she found the courage to fight back. But was she too late to save the people she loved?

Four children by her father. Thirty years of horrific sexual abuse.Now updated with a new epilogue, detailing Katherine’s brave stand at the Royal CommissionIn March 2009, Joseph Fritzl was sentenced to life in jail for the systematic imprisonment, torture and rape of his daughter Elisabeth over 24 years, fathering seven children. The case shocked the world.But just a month before, the story of Australia’s own house of horrors was em...

The Boy They Tried to Hide is the startling, true account about a troubled young boy who disappears into the woods by his house. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction ...Shane Dunphy was working as a resource teacher in a rural town when he was approached by the mother of one of his pupils, seeking help. She is worried for her troubled young son, who has been found leaving the house late at night to go deep into the woods near their home. He has spoken of meetings with ...

When no one cares, who will pick up the pieces of abused children’s lives?At eleven o' clock one night in 1997, four hungry, damaged young children arrive on foster carers Trisha and Mike Merry's doorstep. Two social workers dropped them off with nothing but the ragged clothes they were wearing and no information. The children were covered in bruises, two had black eyes, one had a broken arm and they were all scratching themselves.Starved, seriously neglect...

Karen McConnel earned a B.A. from the University of Toledo and her M.S.W. from the University of Alabama. She developed and coordinated a Therapeutic Foster Care Program and was Executive Director of a community-based agency providing services for runaway and homeless youth. Eileen Brand is a journalist and author whose work has been published in newspapers and journals in the US.

In the much-anticipated follow-up to Sunday Times bestseller Trapped, foster carer Rosie Lewis tells the heartbreaking true story of 13-year-old Zadie.When the young teenage girl runs away from home and is discovered hiding on the city streets by the police, it is clear that all is not as it should be.Taught to believe that Westerners should not be trusted, when Zadie is initially delivered into the experienced hands of foster carer Rosie she is polite and well-behaved, but...

A difficult and distressing tale of a young boy who desperately needs to be loved.Nathan is a troubled young child. Disruptive, aggressive and, most disturbingly, prone to violent mood-swings Nathan soon finds himself in at the school’s behavioural unit, managed by Casey – Ms Watson to her students. What’s even more disturbing is Nathan’s split personalities; from Jenny with a bright blonde wig to sexually frustrated Jack, Nathan’s behaviour demonstrates some serious psychological ...

The second in a series of true short stories from foster carer Mia Marconi.India was a child who was destined to end up in care. She came to foster carer Mia Marconi’s house when she was three; she’d already been in care for five months by then. But her mum Amy didn’t get on with her carer and threatened to kill her so India was moved.But no matter how inadequate parents are, children in care love them and want the world to love them too.Amy had had a hard life: she...

A heartbreaking and shocking short story from foster carer Rosie Lewis.Toddler Charlie falls from the second floor window of his tower block home while his mother is busy shooting up in their dirty council flat.Laying alone on a pile of rubbish until concerned neighbours hear him whimpering, Charlie is taken to hospital by police officers who are unable to rouse his mother.With a gash to his head, a terrified Charlie is delivered to foster carer Rosie Lewis’s home. ...