Stuart just wanted his father to love him, but he was made to believe he was too naughty to be loved. Finally David Howarth was sent to prison for abusing Stuart's young sisters. Nobody knew the truth about Stuart's abuse until one fateful day when his father tried it again and Stuart fought back in the only way he knew how.Stuart Howarth spent the first thirty years of his life in mental and physical hell. After years of emotional torment and despair, at the age of 32 Stuart felt ...

The author of the bestselling Please Daddy No reveals more harrowing experiences of his neglected childhood.Having survived the terrible abuse at the hands of his stepfather, Stuart has to reach within himself again to live through the degradation of prison. He is released back into the world without any support or counselling from the authorities.The child abuse and numerous court cases had almost destroyed him, and Stuart became reliant on drugs and alcohol. With his life...

Sophie Young tells her shocking true story in Please Will Someone Help Me?Sophie Young was born into a dysfunctional family, with a violent mother and father. Sophie was routinely neglected and harmed, starved and left to fend for herself. Social workers were often involved but, despite numerous visits and extensive reports, nothing was ever done.When Sophie was six, her life took another horrible turn: her adored grandfather began to sexually abuse her....

Paul Mason's father was a policeman. He was also a member of a sadistic paedophile ring. He would keep Paul locked up and naked in a tiny cupboard under the stairs of their home before sexually abusing him. This cycle of abuse continued for several years and also affected his brother. The cupboard became a horrific prison where fear and terror filled his every moment.The Cupboard Under the Stairs is a story of abuse at the mercy of adults whom Paul should have been able to...

'It is my dearest hope that this book will allow me to reach out to others in pain and give them hope, for they too can choose to be a survivor.'Izzy Hammond's deaf and partially blind parents attracted sympathy from the outside world, but no one knew of the horrific abuse their daughter was subjected to inside the family home.In Someone To Watch Over Me, Izzy is now able to reveal how the vicious childhood abuse she suffered, first at the hands of her fat...

Unforgivable is the shocking real-life story of suffering and survival from child abuse victim Collette Elliott."I brought you into this world and I can take you out with one click of my fingers."What if Baby P or Daniel Pelka had lived to tell their tale?Collette Elliott once had a similar story. She slipped through the net and only just survived.Her childhood was a place of filth and terror. Her prostitute mother abused and neglec...

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...

From the author of international bestsellers A Circle of Children and Lovey comes an inspiring true story of a gifted teacher’s determination to understand the ‘rotten’ city kid everyone has given up on.Sitting quiet and withdrawn at a battered school desk, Luke had the looks of a shy angel – and a past that special needs teacher Mary MacCracken could barely believe.Already Luke had been picked up 24 times by the police. He’d set over a dozen major fires, and had a staggeri...

In her bestselling memoir As I Lay Me Down to Sleep, Eileen Munro vividly documented the abuse she experienced at the hands of her adoptive parents and, later, within the care system. The birth of Eileen's son, Craig, and her escape from the authorities' clutches should have seen her turn a corner, but she remains haunted by the spectre of her past.In If I Should Die Before I Wake, Eileen chronicles her search for her real parents and her battle for an education f...

John grew up in poverty in Limerick, Ireland, in the 1960s. Fatherless, and with a family in chaos, John fell prey to the predatory clutches of a neighbour, setting off a cycle of sexual abuse that eventually led to being sold as a teenage prostitute.Against all odds, John put himself through college and became a lawyer. But there was no escaping his past. One day, a man arrived in desperate need of representation and failed to recognise John as the boy he'd once abused. Now John ha...

Little Girl Lost is the first part of Ingrid Steels shocking, heartrending life story. She was put in an orphanage at the age of four, she never knew her real name. Then after years of bullying, deprivation and gratuitous punishment -even sexual abuse - in a series of orphanages, she was incarcerated first in a borstal, then in a mental hospital.

At just six years old Tom Wilson fell prey to a predator of the worst sort. David Murphy was supposed to be his carer, instead he lifted his victims from their beds in the dead of night, and Tom was powerless to stop it.Tom endured years of horrific abuse which led to years of silence and self-torture. He grew up to be a troubled man, stumbling through care homes, schools, borstal and eventually prison. The damage that was done to him in those early years had destroyed his life.