'This morning I found this bag. I had been looking for sweets. I put my hand in the bag and felt a sticky liquid on my fingers, then I looked at it. A red smear. Then I looked in the bag: bloody knives and clothes. It didn't feel good. What did it mean? I don't know. There are no answers; I daren't ask the questions'Growing up in poverty in London's East End, Kathy was eight years old when her father forced her mother into prostitution. When their mother fled, leaving Kathy and her...

He beat them, he abused them, and he tortured them. He broke their dreams. But they came back stronger.‘Terrie and Paul are two of the bravest people I have ever met. I have only shared the briefest glimpse into the true horrors this brother and sister have endured, but I rarely come across cases this bad. After the unspeakable abuse and shocking betrayals, two incredible human beings came through – to inspire us all.’Sara Payne OBE, co-founder of Phoenix SurvivorsTe...

Family Shame is a tragic true story of an 11yr old boy looking for love in all the wrong places. Timmy finds himself in a dark lonely horrific world of child pornography. While trying to survive physical and mental abuse he suffers by his mother Linda, who is constantly looking for ways to punish Timmy. Linda who was also abused as a child drinks and does drugs and is crazy with anger, and her youngest son is clearly in her way. Timmy’s father works out of town and is hardly at home and wh...

‘Each time my mother laid a finger on me… it was another step into the jaws of hell. Her abuse, more so than any other, destroyed me. It was the ultimate betrayal.’Abused from the age of eight by her older brother and then her step-father, Maureen Wood quickly became numb to the constant suffering. But Maureen’s world crumbled when her own mother started to abuse her too…A Family Secret is the harrowing true story of how one little girl survived sickening ...

Stephen Smith is the boy who did not exist.Born out of wedlock in the early 1960s, Steve's parents hid him away from the world by locking him in the cellar...for thirteen years.Starved and beaten, the little boy's world was a darkened room that measured just eight feet by ten with a single makeshift bed, bare light bulb, and a solitary table. Steve would spend his days conjuring up an imaginary world full of monsters he would draw to try an...

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...

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...

She held Daddy's hand looking down into an empty hole, our basement of our new house being built, She didn't know the horror that lay in wait for her! The basement wasn't just a place to play dolls in! At the age of five, she was sexually assaulted by someone there and continued as she grew. She was introduced to sexual things no little girl (or boy) should ever be! She told her mother, she looked at her coldly and said "Nice girls don't act like that, never talk about this again"! She mus...

He told me he loved me.He told me it was normal.I wanted to believe him.Emma’s grandad was kind and loving, so when she was 11 and he started abusing her, she didn't understand what was happening. He convinced her that what he did to her was normal, and that their relationship was special – but then manipulated her into having sex with another man. Over the next seven years, Emma’s grandad sold her to over two hundred men, and forced her to ...

This deeply moving memoir tells the story of Hannah: a child who has been beaten and abused; a girl full of loneliness and rage; a student no one but learning disabilities teacher Mary MacCracken could reach.Mary had reservations about eight-year-old Hannah joining her class. The three emotionally disturbed boys she was currently looking after had been making steady progress, and Hannah, who had a reputation for being a withdrawn and incredibly troubled child, would only be a disru...

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...

AS SEEN ON 60 MINUTESThis compelling memoir of family secrets, murder, sexual assault and domestic violence is also the gripping story of Renee's constant struggle to accept the truth and her true identity, and, ultimately, to forge a life on her own terms.From the outside, Renee McBryde had a fairly typical childhood - school, working mum, swimming lessons with loving grandparents. But waiting for her was a secret so awful that it...