Showing titles in Abuse

Heavily tattooed and foul-mouthed, Nadia Bolz-Weber, a former stand-up comic, sure as hell didn't consider herself to be religious-leader material - until the day she ended up leading a friend's funeral in a smoky downtown comedy club. Surrounded by fellow alcoholics, depressives, and cynics, she realized: These were her people. Maybe she was meant to be their pastor. Using life stories, Nadia uses humorous narrative and poignant honesty to portray a woman who is both deeply faithful and deeply flawed, giving hope to the rest of us along the way.

Growing up with a mother with narcissistic personality disorder (NPD) is one of the most painful and damaging experiences anyone can live through. Many adult daughters believe there is something wrong with them, when in fact they are suffering from complex post-traumatic stress disorder, low self-esteem, anxiety, and depression.

"You’re just too sensitive!" "That didn’t happen. You must be imagining things." "I don’t remember saying anything like that. You must have misunderstood me." Do these phrases seem familiar? Perhaps a little too familiar? If you hear them often, you might be a victim of abuse - gaslighting. It might mean that someone is manipulating you, making you not trust yourself. Someone is trying to take control of your life.

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.

Part autobiography and part personal guide to healing, The Reluctant Healer takes listeners on a journey through the reluctant beginnings of healer and author David Elliott’s life and work. Interspersed throughout the book are exercises and examples that encourage listeners to examine their own life and story, creating the opportunity for those who go on the journey with David to connect the dots around their own potential as a healer.

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.

Imagine being an innocent seven-year-old girl with a broke, single mum. Now imagine your mum meets a man who can give her a nice house and a better life in exchange for you. That’s what happened to me. For years, I suffered neglect and psychological and sexual abuse from him, with my mum being a silent witness. When I was finally able to get rid of him and escape, I didn’t know that my life was only going to get worse.

The name Armand Hammer conjures up many aspirational ideals. Billionaire. Industrialist. Successful businessman. Philanthropist. Art collector. It sounds like the idealized American success story. However, the reality of growing up Hammer had a very dark side, with very real consequences. Violence. Addiction. Abuse. These are just some of the realities that Casey Hammer, the only granddaughter of Armand Hammer, had to overcome. As dark as her recollections are, Casey's is a story of survival, hope, and inspiration. Lift the veil and see the realities of growing up Hammer.

In the summer of 1995, at the largest Boy Scout camp in Ohio, a night of sexual violence ended with one counselor dead and another hospitalized. The death was ruled "accidental." It wouldn't be the last death associated with Seven Ranges Reservation. James Renner, too, was a counselor at Seven Ranges that year. He was always sure there must be more to the story of Mike Klingler's death, because Renner also knew firsthand that the 900-acre camp was not the safe getaway it was portrayed to be.

Nobel laureate, world-renowned doctor and human rights activist Dr Mukwege has dedicated his life to caring for victims of sexual violence. Over the past two decades living and working in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, he has stood up to soldiers and warlords, survived massacres and multiple assassination attempts, never swaying from his mission. In this book, Dr Mukwege interweaves his own dramatic story with the experiences of a range of extraordinary characters.

One out of three married women sitting in an average conservative Christian church is in a confusing and painful marriage relationship. These women believe they are alone. I want them to know they aren't. They believe they can't find peace. I want them to know they can. They believe they don't have choices. I want them to know they do.

Is your relationship "always about her?" Does it seem condemned to an endless break-up/make up cycle? Do your friends think your girlfriend is bad news? If you are stuck in a confusing, exhausting, crazy-making relationship and looking for a way to make sense of your girlfriend's self-centered, erratic, or volatile behavior, you need The Wise Lesbian Guide to Getting Free from Crazy-Making Relationships and Getting On With Your Life.

In November 2000, Chicago journalist and music critic Jim DeRogatis received an anonymous fax that alleged R. Kelly had a problem with “young girls”. Weeks later, DeRogatis broke the shocking story, publishing allegations that the R&B superstar and local hero had groomed girls, sexually abused them, and paid them off. DeRogatis thought his work would have an impact. Instead, Kelly’s career flourished. No one seemed to care: not the music industry, not the culture at large, not the parents of numerous other young girls. But for more than 18 years, DeRogatis stayed on the story.

When our partner is a narcissist, only those who've actually experienced the madness will ever understand what we're going through. When Love Is a Lie is a straight-up, tell-all book about narcissism in relationships that skips the clinical bullshit to focus solely on the personal experience. A narrative that holds nothing back, Zari Ballard's story will educate, enlighten, and empower you to evaluate (and fully understand) the mind-boggling dysfunction in your own relationship.

They are five kids with five different fathers and an alcoholic mother who leaves them to fend for themselves for weeks at a time. Yet through it all, they have each other. Rosie, the youngest, is fawned over and shielded by her older sister, Regina. Their mother, Cookie, blows in and out of their lives "like a hurricane, blind and uncaring to everything in her path". But when Regina emancipates herself as a minor and escapes, her siblings are separated.

In 1979, a fiery preacher named Jane Whaley attracted a small group of followers with a promise that she could turn their lives around. In the years since, Whaley’s following has expanded to include thousands of congregants across three continents. Based on hundreds of interviews, secretly recorded conversations, and thousands of pages of documents, Pulitzer Prize winner Mitch Weiss and Holbrook Mohr’s Broken Faith is a terrifying portrait life inside the Word of Faith Fellowship, and the harrowing account of one family who escaped after two decades.

I know that you’re the kind of woman who wants to be able to live life on your own terms, but in order to do that, you need to know how to keep yourself and your space safe. The problem is that right now, your safety depends on what the guys around you want, not what you want. It makes you feel vulnerable, sometimes even scared.

Like millions of women, Eve Ensler has been waiting much of her lifetime for an apology. Sexually and physically abused by her father, Eve has struggled her whole life from this betrayal, longing for an honest reckoning from a man who is long dead. After years of work as an anti-violence activist, she decided she would wait no longer; an apology could be imagined, by her, for her, to her.

George Pell: leader of the Catholic Church in Australia, confessor to Tony Abbott. David Marr: the nation's leading biographer and investigative journalist. Cardinal George Pell is the most prominent Catholic leader in Australia at a time when the Church's handling of sexual abuse is being closely investigated. He is also the confessor of prime-minister-in-waiting Tony Abbott.

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.