Showing titles in Sexual Abuse & Harassment

The definitive account of Bill Cosby's transition from revered father figure to convicted criminal, told by a veteran crime reporter and former senior writer for People Magazine.

In January 2017, Chimene Suleyman was on her way to an abortion clinic in Queens, New York with her boyfriend, the father of her nascent child. It was the last day they would spend together. In an extraordinary sequence of events, Chimene was to discover the truth of her boyfriend's life: that she and many other women had been subtly, patiently and painfully betrayed. In this spellbinding memoir, she exposes one man's control over many women and the trauma he left behind, and celebrates the sisterhood that formed in his wake despite - and in spite of - him.

Revised and updated to include current studies, politics, and discussions, The Macho Paradox is the first book to show how violence against women is a male issue as well as a female one - and how we can come together to stop it. Written by pioneering anti-violence educator Jackson Katz, The Macho Paradox incorporates the voices and experiences of women and men who have confronted the problem from all angles, the discussions surrounding currents events in politics and pop culture, and where the violence is ignored or encouraged in our upbringing.

In November 2021, Ghislaine Maxwell was convicted of five counts of sex-trafficking of minors, and now faces 55 years in prison for the role she played in Jeffrey Epstein’s abuse of four girls. The trial was meticulously covered by journalist and legal reporter Lucia Osborne-Crowley, one of only four reporters allowed into the courtroom every day. The Lasting Harm is her account of that trial, a gripping true crime drama and a blistering critique of a criminal justice system ill-equipped to deliver justice for abuse survivors, no matter the outcome.

Behind the tall, foreboding gates of a commune in Brazil, Daniella Mestyanek Young was raised in the religious cult The Children of God, also known as The Family, as the daughter of high-ranking members. Her great-grandmother donated land for one of The Family’s first communes in Texas. Her mother, at thirteen, was forced to marry the leader and served as his secretary for many years. Beholden to The Family’s strict rules, Daniella suffers physical, emotional, and sexual abuse—masked as godly discipline and divine love—and is forbidden from getting a traditional education.

For several years, a prolific predator haunted Bristol. Avon and Somerset Police had tried all their usual tactics to catch the ‘Clifton Rapist’, and public pressure was mounting. In 1979, a daring new plan was introduced. A small group of young female officers – some aged just 18 – put their lives on the line, walking the quiet residential roads late at night, acting as bait. Drawing on in-depth research and first-hand interviews with the women at the heart of the operation, Decoy is a dramatic retelling of one of the most groundbreaking agent provocateur stings in British history.

The prevalence of sex crimes has become one of the most urgent and most widely misunderstood subjects of our times. We are living through a sea change in our attitudes to sex crimes, yet we continue to get things badly wrong in the way we respond to them. Drawing on over 30 years' experience, Patrick Tidmarsh argues that we need to find a new way to understand, investigate and talk about these crimes. He forces us all to question our own prejudices and assumptions - about both victims and perpetrators.

Playwright, author, and activist Eve Ensler has devoted her life to the female body - how to talk about it, how to protect and value it. Yet she spent much of her life disassociated from her own body - a disconnection brought on by her father’s sexual abuse and her mother’s remoteness. “Because I did not, could not inhabit my body or the Earth,” she writes, “I could not feel or know their pain.” But Ensler is shocked out of her distance.

She said she was raped; police said she lied. It was an easy case to close until two detectives cracked it back open. On 11 August 2008, 18-year-old Marie reported that a masked man had broken into her home and raped her. Within days, police - and even those closest to Marie - became suspicious of her story: details of the crime just didn’t seem plausible. Confronted with the seeming inconsistencies, Marie broke down and said her story was a fabrication - a bid for attention. The police convicted her of making a false report. She was vilified as a liar.

On a summer night in 1984, 19-year-old UC Berkeley sophomore Karen Thomas leaves her uniformed patrol job at the University of California Police Department and walks home alone in darkness. At the threshold of her apartment a man assaults her at knife point. After a soul chilling struggle she manages to escape and call 911. Police catch her assailant, she identifies him, and he is arrested. Fast forward 2014, 30 years after her assault. Why does the body remember what the mind tries so desperately to forget?

In the autumn of 1992, two young women students at Melbourne University went to the police claiming that they had been indecently assaulted at a party. The man they accused was the head of their co-ed residential college. The controversial book that Helen Garner wrote about the resulting Ormond College sexual harassment case caused a social media storm. Prominent feminists were outraged at Garner's perceived support for the man involved, but many saw her approach a necessary and much welcome nuance towards the power dynamic between men and women.

Held against her will and raped by her 38-year-old boss, 19-year-old Anna tries to make sense of her unbelievable situation. How did an innocent friendship with her boss turn into weeks of forced sex and the inability to leave her oppressor's side? Furthermore, what happens when weeks of rape result in a pregnancy? This true-life novel depicts a graphic and raw recounting of the unimaginable horrors of the Summer of 2010.

Narcissistic abuse was originally defined as a specific form of emotional abuse of children by narcissistic parents, but more recently the term has been applied more broadly to refer to any abuse by a narcissist (someone that who admires their own attributes), in particular in adult-to-adult relationships the abuse may be mental, physical, financial, spiritual or sexual. If you have been through an abusive relationship with someone who has Narcissistic Personality Disorder, you will know that no one understands what you are going through unless they have personally experienced it.

We like to think that we're gradually making progress towards equality. With the advent of ever more high-tech equipment at our fingertips, we tend to assume that progress will be hastened, as new technology is used in positive and democratising ways. But there is a new wave of technologies which threaten this notion. Deepfakes. The metaverse. Cyber brothels. With misogyny being baked into their design, these technologies are dragging women back to the dark ages.

From award-winning journalist Beth Ashley comes a groundbreaking investigation into the history of slutshaming, how it continues to affect us today and what we can do to fight it. What is a slut? Where did the word come from? And what do the Jonas Brothers, TikTok and Shakespeare have to do with it? Beth Ashley has the answers in this eye-opening account of slutshaming through the ages and how it’s changed over time but still affects us in the 21st century.

Based on groundbreaking original reporting, an extensive new look at Donald Trump's relationships with women, revealing new accusations of sexual misconduct, exploring the roots of his alleged predatory behavior, and illustrating how Trump's presidency has helped catalyse the #MeToo movement and revitalise women's activism.

Power has a God-given role in human relationships and institutions, but it can lead to abuse when used in unhealthy ways. Speaking into current #MeToo and #ChurchToo conversations, this book shows that the body of Christ desperately needs to understand the forms power takes, how it is abused, and how to respond to abuses of power.

Bart, die aantreklikste ou in haar matriekklas, soen Esli uit haar vel. Vir meer as veertig jaar deel hulle hul lewens, maak saam kinders groot en sien om na vriende en familie. Jaarliks vier hulle Kersfees in Kleinmond met geskenke en trifle en stappies langs die see met hul worshond. Maar hoekom val Bart se broer uit ’n boom voor Esli se ouerhuis? En watter donker geheim is onderliggend aan Bart se ma se vreemde gedrag en onfatsoenlike grappe?

Sexual violence is an epidemic happening across all intersections of society, impacting every one of us. In the aftermath of the #MeToo and Time's Up movements, a cultural conversation has been ignited about the prevalence, immediate impact and long-term effects that sexual violence has on people. It has begun conversations on sexism, misogyny, consent and trauma. From the entertainment industry to governments; from India to the USA, people are beginning to listen to the pain survivors have been living with forever.

While patriarchy and misogyny are problems everywhere, they take on a particularly pernicious form in Christian churches, where those with power have been insisting, since many decades before #MeToo, that this sexually dysfunctional environment is, in fact, exactly how God wants it to be. #ChurchToo turns over the rocks of the church's sexual dysfunction, revealing just what makes sexualized violence in religious contexts both ubiquitous and uniquely traumatizing.