Lauren’s story is an important one, I think, for three reasons:

1. Lauren comes from a very well-to-do family. We don’t tend to hear much about someone being abused in upper-middle class white families, but it absolutely happens. More than many probably want to admit.

2. On a similar note, Lauren was molested by a female perpetrator, another thing we tend to not talk a lot about. As a society we want to pigeonhole our pedophiles, to assure ourselves that our children are safer than they really are. Pedophiles come in all shapes and sizes. Avoiding the “creepy” looking middle age men does nothing to actually protect kids.

3. Lauren not only told while she was being abused, but also went through a messy and lengthy legal proceeding. This part of her story is also not one we tend to hear about a lot, but it’s vital that we understand what the process looks like, what sort of challenges are included, and plan for being able to overcome them.

The other thing that I think Lauren does an excellent job of, is including a lot of education within her story. Yes, she tells a story that is heartbreaking, that brings tears to your eyes as you imagine a lonely young girl being groomed and eventually assaulted by the woman she has come to trust and love. In between those pages though, you’ll find a lot of explanation as to what was happening, why, how it fits with typical abuse victims behavior, etc. Those of you have been on your own healing journey for awhile now, or who have spent a lot of time reading and studying child abuse may find the explanations a bit basic, but you also have to remember who the audience for this book is. It’s not us, it’s the children being abused, the parents jut discovering the abuse happening to their children, and those struggling to share their “secrets”. In that regard, Lauren does a good job of showing them the reality of healing.

I also have to respect Lauren for another reason. Yes, she’s a child of privilege, who had access to more resources to add in her healing, and her legal case, than most survivors do. (Her father is a well-known lobbyist in Florida with quite a few helpful connections.) It would be easy to dismiss much of her success to that, however you have to also give her credit for taking full advantage of her status to help others. She, with the aid of her father, have gotten the state of Florida to pass numerous laws to help victims of abuse, and she has started her own foundation, Lauren’s Kids. You can learn more about the foundation on their website, where you’ll also see that Lauren is currently in the midst of walking across Florida to raise money and awareness for abuse prevention programs. If you’re in Florida, check out when she’ll be in your area, and the opportunities to help out along the route, or by walking with her. Even if you’re not, you can donate, or simply give a thought for her safety and health along the 1,500 mile route!

1. Book Review – Reverse Psychology by Tara Overzat
2. Book Review – Many Faces of PTSD
3. Book Review – Let’s Play House by Hannah Faye

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In one sense, this book could be a bit difficult to read. There are stories told by people who offended as children, taking advantage of younger children. I recognize that not every survivor may be able to read that without becoming a tad overwhelmed. As always with any of our reviews, please be aware of your own limitations, and be careful out there!

On the other hand, the stories told in this book, taken as a whole, do teach us certain things about child abuse.

Within these 6 stories you see a wide variety of victims, and circumstances. There are poor minorities exposed to pornography at a very early age, there are children from wealthy families victimized by an adult, there are male and female victims, male and female offenders, those who have been successful adults, and those who have never truly reached healing. As I finished reading the different stories I couldn’t help but notice this fact, and be reminded that it doesn’t really matter who you are, there are other people just like you who are survivors. Of course, that also reminds us just how prevalent child sexual abuse is. It’s affecting all different ethnic and religious groups, at any economic level, whether there are two parents in the home, or a broken home. No one is truly safe.

One other thing that occurred to me as I read this, and excuse me if this veers a bit from a typical review, is that all the victims and offenders talked specifically about being introduced to sexuality before they were ready. Whether it was the availability of porn at mom’s boyfriends house, a peep hole discovered by young boys, or simply hearing parents having sex or having an adult purposely introduce sexual images and acts on a young child, each story talked specifically about not being ready to handle sexuality. Obviously, in 2011, I’m not sure that it’s really possible to completely prevent any child from seeing sexual images, or reading about sex, before they are ready. In fact, I’m willing to bet that most, if not all, children have seen and learned plenty by the time they are 9-10 years old, which seems to be the common age for this collection of stories. Yet, in many cases that doesn’t turn into the sort of sexual abuse that occurred in these stories. As I read back through them a second time, though, another interesting connection occurred to me. Not only were the children in these stories exposed to sexuality very early, but they were also left to deal with it on their own, with no adult to provide proper context. Granted in some cases because the adult who was supposed to provide context and explanation was the offender, but in others there simply was no room to go to a parent or other adult with what was happening.

I don’t know that I have all the answers to eliminating the sexual abuse of children, but this book did remind me of the importance of having adults involved in the life of a child. I don’t think in this day and age we can prevent any exposure to sexual images and sounds, but we can be sure that kids have a safe place to bring their questions, and their concerns. Maybe that’s really the best we can do.

What do you think?

Obviously, for a short e-book, Let’s Play House does provide quite a few perspectives, without ever wondering away from the simple stories. The stories are enough by themselves to stir many thoughts, and presenting them without comment allows us as readers to consider our own thoughts and experiences. I imagine it would make for a good group discussion too, so if you’ve read it leave a comment with what your thoughts were.

1. Book Review: The Enemy Between My Legs
2. Book Review – Reverse Psychology by Tara Overzat
3. Book Review – Many Faces of PTSD

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First, the background. This is a novel. I can only assume some of it is based on Tara’s own experiences, but it is not a memoir, so it’s a bit different than many of the other books we have reviewed here. The exact details of the story may or may not have actually happened, however if you’ve grown up in an abusive, dysfunctional family, I do think you’ll be able to identify with Marla Conroy, the narrator and central figure.

If you don’t have that sort of background, this book may not be very easy for you to read. Not because it is overly graphic, or disturbing, in fact it is not any of those things, but because it is a bit haphazard. In telling her story, Marla tends to skip around, sharing a short memory from the time she was 10, then another from years earlier, followed by something that happened in High School. While there’s a rough sense of a timeline, it is not consistent, and the events do not necessarily even fit together in any logical way to you, as the reader.

That was my first impression as I started into the story, but it was a short-lived one because I realized that’s exactly the way I remember my childhood, in bits and pieces. Sure, there’s a rough timeline of growing up, but if I spend much time thinking about it, or trying to document it as Marla is doing in the story, that is pretty much how it would come out. One story would remind me of another story, or there would be a story about something that happened when I was 12 that I felt the need to explain further by telling you about something else that happened a few years earlier. In my mind, those details may be part of the same story because I somehow connected them in my head, but the connection wouldn’t be clear to anyone else. They didn’t live those memories, I did.

So, while a true literary review might disagree, I give Tara a plus for staying true to the reality of how an adult survivor would communicate their story in the real world.

As far as the story is concerned, again it rang very “real” to me, even as I acknowledge that it is a novel.

Growing up with the assumption that everyone’s family was like this, they just hid it and so should you? I did that.

Blaming yourself once you realized that no everyone’s family was like this? Did that too.

Discovering later in life that your parents have told you things about aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents that weren’t true, for unknown reasons? Still learning that lesson.

There were a great many things about Marla’s life that I could identify with, and can recognize now as highly dysfunctional. I also remember all too well those feelings of worthlessness, and impending doom whenever something good did happen, because I couldn’t possibly deserve it. After all, no one protected me from my childhood, therefore I wasn’t worth protecting, in my mind.

It takes a lot to overcome that, let alone write about it, even with a fictional character. So while the Reverse Psychology e-book might not be a literary classic, it does speak a very important truth, and gives a realistic voice to the many, many survivors of abuse and dysfunction that have remained silent for all these years.

You can order your own copy using Paypal from Tara’s website.

1. Book Review – Many Faces of PTSD
2. Book Review: The Enemy Between My Legs
3. Book Review – Let’s Play House by Hannah Faye

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Being the second book, Keeble goes into detail on a handful of individual cases over the course of a year. This gives a wider idea of the unit’s inner workings and the unpredictable day-to-day workload his unit could encounter. In an extreme example, that included the pursuit of either witnesses or suspects abroad at a moment’s notice. It also illustrates how the falsely accused can also become victims, a fact often forgotten. Simple neglect all the way up to serious CSA are all covered along with the false allegation case, and Keeble makes no apologies in stating what would make the life of police and social services easier in providing good frontline child protection and mentions feedback from all concerned to his first book.

Little Victim is another absorbing book which you can speed-read or take your time over the procedural sections. You’re getting the cop’s eye view here but his assertion that cases would never be forgotten is a platitude and an unrealistic one – looking at his workload over just the one year, added to the cases that probably didn’t make the book, and Keeble is human and clearly too busy – though he is big enough to accept all viewpoints on his books.

That one annoyance aside, this is an excellent book and we’ll review Baby X as part of our general catchup at a later date.

- CBG

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At 213 hardback pages Silent Scream is also a quick read and a good “note comparison” memoir when referring to therapeutic help for anything you might have missed in your own recovery. Probably best of all is that the book finishes with the author in a better place but mindful that it doesn’t equal a happy end, rather recognising his good fortune in not having pressed the self-destruct button with the desired success he might have wanted earlier.

So it’s a great book, actually dating back to around the time of Our Little Secret by Duncan Fairhurst but overlooked in the sales rush for the latter book. If you need a male survival memoir, it’s potentially triggering in places but worth the read.

Amazon Page is here;

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Silent-Scream-Josh-Cannon/dp/0719520983/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1296299271&sr=1-7

- CBG

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Why Me? is Sarah’s story, plain and simple. She shares some of the many, many stories of abusive behavior she experienced at the hands of her mother and stepfather, as well as some of the things she did as a child to cope with an insane situation. If you’ve never experienced or had someone in your life share these sorts of stories with you, it will seem pretty intense, and shocking. Sarah does a great job of communicating the seemingly irrational world abused children live in, and the constant state of hyper-alertness required to navigate day-to-day life. Every time it seems that Sarah stops to enjoy a moment, it turns out badly.

Eventually, Sarah shares some of the details of how she got out of that house, and where she is now. While I do wish she could have shared some more details about the time after leaving her mother’s life, and how she managed to heal during that time, I also realize that would have made for a much longer book, and wasn’t what she set out to do. I believe that Sarah set out, through telling her story, to try both to explain her own life, to herself and the reader, and to provide a story of hope for other survivors. I can only assume that writing her story was therapeutic for herself. However, I do know for a fact that her story provides a glimmer of hope for other survivors, and children going through abuse currently.

Not only did Sarah survive the abuse she endured, but she found people willing to step up and help her when she least expected it, and she was able to move beyond her childhood and find happiness as an adult. So many survivors struggle with thinking they will never really feel happiness, and Why Me? provides a great example of someone proving that it is, indeed possible. For that, I’m extremely glad that Sarah has shared her story with us!

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The book is, in essence, 12 case studies, conglomerations of years worth of Susan’s therapy clients. Each individual is presented in a typical case fashion, starting with their story, their symptoms, their treatment steps, and finally what was learned by the therapist from that treatment.

As I started the first case study, Brenda, I did have my one moment of disagreement with the author. Brenda was a victim of domestic violence, and Susan chose that time to write the following:

The domestic violence abuser will usually, but not always, be a man. The abused will usually be a woman. Men tend to act out, and women tend to internalize. Please understand that these are generalizations, and stereotypes. (All we need to do is look at same sex relationships to see the exceptions.) However, generalizations and stereotypes don’t make themselves up. They evolve from repeated examples.

I had to put the book down after reading that. I’m going to assume this statement is based on the clients the author has seen in her practice, that it’s woman or homosexual men who have come to her for PTSD symptoms created by domestic abuse, and therefore she has not familiarized herself with the growing number of studies that show that it is, indeed, fairly common for women to be the aggressors when it comes to domestic violence. Male victims are, however, much less likely to seek out professional help, thus perpetuating the stereotype that is, nonetheless, completely false. (By the way, if stereotypes do not make themselves up, I wonder how the author would feel about other racial and sexual stereotypes?)

That being said, I did pick the book back up again and discover that, despite my early disagreement on this point, there was indeed quite a lot of valid information in the case studies. I began to see many of the same symptoms show up in case after case, and recognize that these same symptoms have existed for me, and many other abuse survivors that I’ve come in contact with. Things like shooting ourselves in the foot repeatedly, hyper-alertness, anxiety, distrust, etc. are very common to me. Even some of the specific examples she cites are things I can easily relate to, such as the need to scan every detail of a room and who is in it before I can feel comfortable, and the idea that those of us who grew up in trauma as opposed to developing our mental “houses” with a good foundation are quite susceptible to being traumatized again and again. I even identified a little bit with a mention about PTSD survivors and what can seem like psychic abilities. Due to our constant, and sometimes subconscious, alertness, we become aware of things that indicate what is about to happen without fully realizing that we are doing it. We’ve grown up looking for any sort of warning about what was coming, and it’s something we don’t ever really stop doing. That does explain why, even now, nothing upsets me more than something I didn’t see coming. It throws me for a loop.

I also found myself agreeing with the author in many of her findings about how the world views, incorrectly, PTSD sufferers as weak, or somehow at fault, yet having the resiliency to survive what we have, and continue on, is actually a sign of strength. So, despite my disagreement with domestic violence generalizations, I do think this is a good book to pick up if you are questioning whether you might be suffering from PTSD, or want to better understand what someone you know with PTSD is going through. Each case’s story and symptoms will help you identify with them as a person, and the explanations will help you better understand what is going on inside of yourself, or your loved one.

If nothing else, as I’ve always said about blogging on this topic, the book will help those of us who have been or are dealing with PTSD symptoms feel just a little less alone. That is a good thing to me.

So, now that I’ve finished the book, should we figure out a way to give away this copy to one of you folks?

1. Book Review: The Enemy Between My Legs
2. Book Review – Let’s Play House by Hannah Faye
3. Book Review – Reverse Psychology by Tara Overzat

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In the more modern title, unlike Rankin’s book, there are almost no overlapping cases with the main plot aside from the one with a trial that finishes when the book starts. The rest of the STC is reserved for fleshing out the lead cop DI Wagstaffe as he tries to track down the vigilantes, much to the community’s disgust and interference of the investigation. There’s more than one paedophile in question being questioned over the revenge perpetrated against them.

The action is written present tense for a reasonably fresh stylistic perspective and cliché is minimized, but the ending is perhaps just a little too neat, even it it’s emotionally sprawling for the actual characters. Whilst the intricacy of the plot seems well thought out and the author’s experience of having daughters seems to inform his female characters well, considering there is a badge on the front stating “As good as Rankin or your money back”, Creed’s DI Wagstaffe is an emotional blank slate compared to Rankin’s DI Rebus without any Scottish hard drinking or winter-hewn wit to make you laugh occasionally. It would be easy to complain about the lack of any mention of male victims, but since the older book by Rankin seems to redress this despite its age, this isn’t as big an issue compared to trying to plug the book with comparisons with another crime author who is at least 18 books ahead of him.

Lots of promotion went into Suffer The Children, it’s reasonable, slick, examines some of the modern-day attitude to child abuse but has “TV Adaption” written all over it at the same time. It’s entertaining enough, I read it twice for review purposes and if the character progresses in his over-arching trek for justice separate to the A plot then it will be worth returning to Creed’s books in future, but since it’s previewing the next book in the series it’s best waiting for special offers at the supermarket or get it out of the library.

Amazon page is here.

- CBG

1. Review: CSI Vegas – Death and The Maiden (2009)
2. Review: Playing With Fire by Theo Fleury (2009)
3. Review: Protecting Our Children (2012, UK)

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From an abuse survival point of view this book, unlike the Kite Runner, fails miserably, box-ticking the get-no-help-drink-too-much-commit-suicide view of a male abuse victim as something inevitable and inescapable. So we re-read the book a second time to get a better handle on a story which does more flashing back and forward than the TV shows Lost and Flashforward combined and on a second read it’s still self-indulgent on the part of the fictional narrator making it hard to sympathise with the loss when the character’s mother is only fleshed out in the past as a younger woman.
Reading this novel is torture, it’s bleak depressing rubbish (as opposed to trying to convey grief) and the attempt to engender the Life Goes On motif by the end with the last in an endless line of family members we don’t get time to care about, doesn’t work. If you’re Irish and feel like being treated to an unending litany of clichés it might be worth getting this book out of the library but only if you have a lot of time to kill because you need to read over half of it before the flashbacks get into the mid 20th century and stay there.

It’s the kind of book that shows that if you know nothing about child sexual abuse in general then not even bothering to depict the specific character, copping out by killing them off and referring to them as the departed ghost, is something writers shouldn’t bother with. Even the disputed Sleepers by Lorenzo Carcaterra with the same ethnicity albeit in a different country, has a more realistic tone to a character suffering the same outcome – so read the latter novel instead and if you own it, read it again.

1. Review: Law and Order SVU: “Loophole” (2007, US)
2. Review: Law and Order: Captive (2007, US)
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It’s a thoroughly researched look at the sport in the 1990s which, like Playing With Fire 13 years later, gives analysis of Hockey as a national sport and what it means to Canadians. Robinson’s sporting pedigree in skiing and cycling and journalistic writing skills give any outsider as much of a clue as the recent action in the Winter Olympics.

The structure of Laura Robinson’s book is its strength – at any point you can skip to case studies but there is no demarcated line where her commentary ends and the case studies begin. The book flows freely from her social comment back to the illustration through case study even though CTL serves as a reference. You can read the section regarding Sheldon Kennedy alone for example, and when reading in a single sitting, not get lost. In fact it was starting with the case studies that had me reading all the way to the end in one sitting and then restarting at the beginning.

As well as a bibliography the afterword sections give a timeline of the events that occurred before and after the highlighted case studies with quoted responses from officials involved (where comments were filed).

CTL is a useful historical reference 12 years on, but could use a second edition which splits off the central subjects of child abuse, sexism and racism/xenophobia within the sport; these are big enough subjects by themselves to receive separate treatment rather than this initial smorgasbord approach, however well written and edited the book was.

The other downside is that Crossing The Line also skirts dangerously close to giving its central noted paedophile Graham James an excuse when reporting his own coach was arrested on abuse charges – with 100 victims by James alone, this excuse in the name of analysis has become tiresome, especially when there was no proof of the abuse, assumption causes damage to the argument. Thankfully elsewhere in the book, the one doctor quoted agrees with the same 30% generational abuse rate for sexual abuse that was borne out in lie-detected research on sex offenders’ own abuse history in The Seduction of Children by Christiane Anderson. To be fair to Robinson, this view is of the period when Sheldon Kennedy disclosed and was going through the legal case and before his own book was released. Now the passing-on of child abuse from one generation to the next is becoming seen as the choice that it is, linked in with the refusal to obtain help for the adult’s own past – on a positive note, this is the quoted view of a police officer who would have seen that happen already.

The same goes for the sexism comments; though we will have to wait for the ratings to come in, both Canada’s women and the men won Olympic Gold a month ago and the women won first; some might say the winning and the worldwide audience of billions (not to mention the Own The Podium proceeds) will help the cause of female hockey ten times as much as any suggestions put forward in this book.

Crossing The Line is still worth a read though 12 years on you’ll need Ebay or a private Amazon seller to pick it up (which keeps the price cheap), or look for it in the library.

Otherwise the Amazon pages follow below for more information;

Canada

US

UK

- CBG

1. Review: Holby City – Walk The Line (2011, UK)
2. Review: Strong At The Heart by Carolyn Lehman
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