Each incident of childhood sexual abuse can foster up to twenty-six basic reactions that range in type and degree. They can manifest as mistrust, social isolation, memory problems, self-blame, and they often even result in repeated victimizations and self-harm.Prior to my training as a counselor, I had thought that those twenty-six consequences were unique to me...that I was alone in my pain. Once I realized that I was not alone and also that these reactions were totally normal res...

**"Complex and challenging... push[es] the boundaries of writing about trauma." —**The New York Times“A True Crime Masterpiece” – VogueEntertainment Weekly "Must" List and Best Books of the Year So FarReal Simple's Best New BooksGuardian Best Book of the YearLambda Literary Award WinnerChautauqua Prize Winner"The Fact of a Body is one of ...

At a time when six-year-old Abbie needs love and security, her mother goes to the hospital and never returns. Still distraught, Abbie is passed to whoever will have her. Her new step mother subjects her to unimaginable physical, sexual and psychological torture and delivers her to local paedophiles in the entertainment business. During her single minded pursuit of fame Abbie's step mother stops at nothing, beating and prostituting her own children.Abbie loses control and becomes we...

Experienced foster carer, Rosie Lewis, takes on the heart-breaking case of Megan, a baby born with a drug addiction and a cleft palate.Addicted to drugs from birth because of her mother’s substance abuse during pregnancy, new-born Megan is taken into Rosie’s loving care. Rosie is supposed to help Megan find her new permanent home, but it turns out that Megan has already found her ‘forever mummy’ in Rosie.Rosie grows incredibly attached to Megan and applies to adopt her, but...

Mama, something terrible is wrong with me. There is blood in my panties! Those were the words of seven-year-old Sarah. Mama told her she must have fallen or something and not to worry. Sarah went away feeling sad; her chance for help was gone! It was Sarahs alter, Susie, who had been sticking pencils and other items in her private place. Susie had come when Sarah was only four years old. Susie had become Daddys special little girl by sitting on his lap. In return he gave her a dollar for any...

Shane Dunphy was involved in social care for fifteen years. This book is a distillation of some of the cases he encountered in that time into a single, year-long narrative. In spite of the narrative's compression, and allowing for the necessary change of identifying details, everything in this book is true. And what the truth reveals! Here are the cases of three dysfunctional families, struggling at the margins of a society that barely acknowledges their existence. This is a portrait of fa...

Battling Chefs, Twin Sleuths, Old Magicians and MURDER!An award-winning Silver Sisters MysteryTake several chefs with names like Caesar Romano, Biff Wellington, Moishe Matsumoto and Toulouse Jankowsky, add sleuthing silver-haired Mae West lookalike twins with a nose for trouble, a couple of well-aged vaudeville magicians, Waldo the Wonder Dog, and a bunch of quirky characters, and season with a heaping cup of jealousy, a pinch of intrigue, a smidgen of history, a r...

Powerful and inspiring, I Own You is the shocking story of how one woman overcame her harrowing past to find happiness on her own terms.To the outside world, Dawn McConnell was a successful businesswoman. No one knew that every waking minute of her day was controlled by her husband Stuart. She had been subjected to years of coercion – belittled, threatened and hit. He told her that she belonged to him, that he would do horrific things to her if she left.

Betrayed can either be read as a full-length eBook or in 3 serialised eBook-only parts.This is PART 2 of 3.You can read Part 2 one week ahead of release of the full-length eBook and paperback.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 and is discovered hiding on the city streets by the police, it is clear that all ...

Rape, teen pregnancy, illegitimacy, domestic abuse - in 1970s Australia all were shameful secrets that trapped women in poverty, loss and ongoing emotional trauma. This is one woman's story of all she lost and how hard she fought to survive.A teenager in the 1970s, Gwen Wilson grew up in Western Sydney. It was a tough childhood. Illegitimate, fatherless - her mother in and out of psychiatric hospitals; it would have been easy for anyone to despair and give up. Yet ...

Experienced foster carer, Rosie Lewis, takes on the heart-breaking case of Megan, a baby born with a drug addiction and a cleft palate.Addicted to drugs from birth because of her mother’s substance abuse during pregnancy, new-born Megan is taken into Rosie’s loving care. Rosie is supposed to help Megan find her new permanent home, but it turns out that Megan has already found her ‘forever mummy’ in Rosie.Rosie grows incredibly attached to Megan and applies to adopt her, but...

TO VEGAS and BACK is Casino meets The Burning Bed, peppered with The Glass Castle. The story begins with a twenty-six-year-old woman living the American dream in the 1960s. She was a homemaker and mother of three in the beautiful suburbs of Philadelphia. At thirty-two she gets a divorce and trades brownies and carpools for pasties and feathers as a Showgirl in Las Vegas. In a nutshell, this woman leaves her husband in 1972 and is swooped up by a rich man who wants to make her a showgirl. H...