Showing titles in Child Abuse

Just a Girl is the shocking true story of Scarlett Jones, who was abused by her loved ones, groomed and trafficked by a gang, all the while fearing for her life. Scarlett is just 8 years old when the horrific abuse at the hands of her father begins. It creates a world of shocking normality, one that she can only escape in her mind. Little Scarlett dreams of a time when she can be free... and then she meets Ed. Groomed and trafficked by her boyfriend, Scarlett realises she has been primed for abuse ever since she was a child. This is her harrowing story.

Kate, born to abusive, drug addicted parents, identifies an inner God voice when she is very young. This voice, and the support of her grandmother, helps her overcome her circumstances instead of falling victim to them. However, as she grows up she finds that the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree, and she discovers that she is an addict herself. Deciding not to go down the path her parents went, she rises above her circumstances again and chooses the path of recovery.

Foster carer Maggie Hartley is finally enjoying a well-earned holiday from fostering, savouring time with her brand-new baby granddaughter. One night, though, the peace and quiet is interrupted by an urgent call from Social Services. A man has been stabbed, and Social Services need to find an emergency placement for his little girl. Maggie is used to children arriving on her doorstep at all times of the day and night, but nothing can prepare her for the sight of 11-year-old Nancy.

When a parent singles out a child for special privileges and attention, that child is often unaware that the relationship is unhealthy - even incestuous. As adults, these children struggle to feel validated, because while they have not been directly abused, they feel a sense of violation and crossed boundaries - usually done in the name of 'love' and 'caring'. The parent's love feels more confining than freeing, more demanding than giving, more intrusive than nurturing. Yet these children suffer from what psychologist Kenneth Adams calls The Silent Seduction.

Shame is one of the most destructive of human emotions. If you suffered childhood physical or sexual abuse, you may experience such intense feelings of shame that it almost seems to define you as a person. In order to begin healing, it's important for you to know that it wasn't your fault. In this gentle guide, therapist and childhood abuse expert Beverly Engel presents a mindfulness and compassion-based therapeutic approach to help you overcome the debilitating shame that keeps you tied to the past.

Eight true crime stories of murder and mayhem. In my first audiobook as a true crime author I've started with a few of the stories that have haunted me for some time. Some of these stories are unbelievable in their brutality while others are astounding in the stupidity of the killers. This collection of stories are from all around the globe and have no common thread between them other than that they are both thought provoking and disturbing. The stories included in this anthology are dark and creepy and will leave you with a new understanding of just how fragile the human mind can be.

In April 1992, a young man named Chris McCandless walked into the Alaskan wilderness, where he survived for more than 100 days before perishing in an abandoned bus. For over twenty years his story has captivated millions, and yet only one person knew the truth behind his remarkable journey - until now.

Imagine waking up one day to discover that you have forgotten everything about your life. Your only link with the past, your only hope for the future, is your identical twin. Now imagine, years later, discovering that your twin had not told you the whole truth about your childhood, your family, and the forces that had shaped you. Why the secrets? Why the silences? You have no choice but to begin again. This has been Alex's reality: a world where memories are just the stories people tell you, where fact and fiction are impossible to distinguish.

It’s a freezing winter’s night in 1954. A baby boy, a few hours old, is left by his mother, wrapped in nothing but two sheets of newspaper and hidden amongst the undergrowth by a canal bank. An hour later, a late-shift postman is walking wearily home when he hears a faint cry. He finds the newspaper parcel and discovers the newborn, white-cold and whimpering, inside. After being rushed to hospital and against all odds, the baby survives. He’s baptised by the hospital chaplain as Richard.

Post-traumatic stress, anxiety, low self-esteem, substance abuse, depression, a lack of confidence, and many other mental and physical ailments may be a result of childhood trauma you have endured. Uncovering, accepting, and healing this childhood trauma will allow you to let go of the pain, releasing yourself from the guilt, shame, and self-destruction you have been living with. This book will provide you with tools and strategies to heal your childhood trauma allowing you to live fully.

Amy's happy life changed forever when her mother suddenly passed. Abandoned by her family as they struggled to cope, she found herself facing hardships and exploitation alone, which eventually led to severe drug addiction at twelve years old. Now she shares what it was like to survive her new life in UK #1 bestselling author Toni Maguire's latest survivor story, Abandoned Child. This book, full of dark secrets and hard choices, follows Amy's journey from a victim to a fighter. The lesson? Change isn't easy, but it is worth it.

In her memoir, Monica, 54, tells the story of her childhood, when her mother, Betty Mount, forced her head under running bathroom taps and tried to strangle her. She had previously tried to kill Monica as a baby. Monica was taken into foster care, where her new parents ran a brutal regime. To the outside world, the family was devoutly religious and respectable, but behind closed doors, Monica was physically and sexually abused.

Three siblings arrive at Maggie's door after being taken into care. Teachers of eight-year-old Bobby spotted bruises while he was getting changed for PE and his dad, Lee, and stepmother, Brianna, have been uncooperative and hostile to Social Services. While they investigate, Bobby, as well as Brianna's daughters, Melodie and Poppy, are all placed in Maggie's care. But as the children settle in, a thought won't let Maggie go. While Melodie and Poppy are clean, well-fed and immaculately dressed, Bobby is pale, severely underweight and crawling with lice.

Children of Coercive Control extends Evan Stark's path-breaking analysis of interpersonal violence to children, showing that coercive control is the most important cause and context of child abuse and child homicide outside a war zone, as well as of the sexual abuse, denigration, exploitation, isolation, and subordination of children. The book provides a working model of the coercive control of children and illustrates its dynamics and consequences with dramatic cases drawn from the headlines and Dr. Stark's forensic practice.

Emily has always felt like an outsider, so when a family friend takes her under his wing she is delighted. But soon it becomes clear that his motives are not all they seem. At the age of 11, Emily is groomed into being a ‘county lines’ drug trafficker. It is the beginning of a vicious cycle that sees her become prey to one abuser after another, involving a huge child-sex-trafficking gang. The scale of the abuse—at the hands of hundreds of men—is sickening, and at times it feels like there will never be an escape. But then, in the darkest of moments, a ray of light shines....

Growing up in a quiet, middle-class suburb outside of Amsterdam, childhood best friends Anna and Olivia had their whole lives ahead of them. But every parent's worst nightmare came true when the teenagers fell in with the wrong crowd. Eleven years their senior, Ryan was charming and good-looking - and Anna and Oliva easy prey. Blind to his grooming, the girls were soon trapped in a terrifying cycle of sexual and physical abuse.

After a life in care, with both good and bad experiences of the system, Hope knows all too well what the risks are for children in care as they approach adolescence. Lacking any sense of self-worth or belonging, children in care are often dismissed by the authorities as impossible to manage and, worse, perceived as children who have invited sexual abuse by placing themselves in 'dangerous' situations. Hope lifts the lid on this untold chapter of her story and the devastating effects she experienced when she reconnected with her past.

Experienced foster carer Rosie Lewis takes on the heart-breaking case of Megan, a baby born with neo-natal abstinence syndrome 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.

At just 10 years old, Kirsty has already suffered a lifetime of heartache and suffering. Neglected by her teenage mother and taken into care, Kirsty thought she had found her forever family when she is fostered by Pat and Mike, who she comes to see as her real mum and dad. But when Pat has a heart attack and collapses in front of her, Kirsty's foster family says it's all her fault. They blame her temper tantrums for putting Pat under stress and they don't want Kirsty in their lives anymore.

For much of the twentieth century, a series of terrible events—abuse, both physical and psychological, and even deaths—took places inside orphanages. The survivors have been trying to tell their astonishing stories for a long time, but disbelief, secrecy, and trauma have kept them from breaking through. For ten years, Christine Kenneally has been on a quest to uncover the harrowing truth.