From A Child Called “It” to The Lost Boy, from A Man Named Dave to Help Yourself, Dave Pelzer’s inspirational books have helped countless others triumph over hardship and misfortune.  In The Privilege of Youth, he shares the missing chapter of his life: as a boy on the threshold of adulthood.  With sensitivity and insight, he recounts the relentless taunting he endured from bullies; but he also describes the thrill of making his first real friends—some of whom he still shares close relationships with today.  He writes about the simple pleasures of exploring his neighborhood, while trying to forget the hell waiting for him at home.From high school to a world beyond the four walls that were his prison for so many years, The Privilege of Youth bravely and compassionately charts this crucial turning point in Dave Pelzer’s life and will inspire a whole new generation of readers.

    . . or watches him punch and kick her mother to within an inch of her life. How could this be? Her older sisters teach her how to survive, even when he comes for her in the night.A girl learns to become invisible, to look the other way, to say nothing when a curious stranger asks if she's okay. To lie. To expect nothing, not even from relatives.To cry without tears.To pray silently.When she is fourteen, and weary, a girl begins to wish she were dead. Cruel Harvest is the compelling story of how she lived instead.

    In this book Sally describes a shocking story of a mother's neglect and a father's betrayal.

    Plunged into a care system that neglected them, Isobel and Alex were expected to come to nothing, and had only each other to rely on.Isobel and Alex’s mother used to do everything with them. A full-time teacher, she dedicated herself to her children, partly in order to give them every possible opportunity in life, and partly to keep them out of the way of their increasingly eccentric, erratic and unpleasant father.Their father, a violent and frightening man, spent most of his time locked in his bedroom, a room the rest of the family never ventured into. He became increasingly bitter and angry at the outside world in general, and at his wife and children in particular. The local community feared his outbursts as much as Isobel and Alex did, but the neighbours saw far less of him as he became increasingly housebound. No one came to the Kerr’s house to visit.When Isobel was 15 and Alex 13, they came home from school to find police everywhere. Their father had stabbed their mother between fifty and sixty times with a sharpened chisel. As far as anyone could tell the attack was unprovoked and of incredible savagery, but the children were given the minimum amount of information. No one wanted to upset them unnecessarily.Their mother had been an only child and they had never been in contact with their father's family. There was no one else for them to turn to - except each other.This is an inspiring story of a brother and sister who only had each other, and a powerful testament to what can be achieved through courage and love.

    She'd always remembered her father's physical abuse, his anger and violence. But there was a lot she had forgotten. And, at the age of 24, after the birth of her son, the memories that were gradually unlocked with the help of a psychiatrist were far more terrible.Katie had grown up living in fear. She'd never forgotten the icy coldness that used to spread through every vein in her body each time her father grabbed her roughly by the arm, or punched and kicked her mother. Or the occasion when she was 3 and he'd locked her in a bedroom for an entire weekend, without food or water. Or the night when he'd brought home a young woman he'd met at a bar, pushing her mother down the stairs when she dared to complain and then locking mother and daughter out in the snow, dressed only in their nightdresses.There were many, many incidents of violence and cruelty that Katie had never forgotten. But when she started a family of her own, and began to see a psychiatrist to help her cope with the debilitating post-natal depression she was suffering, she was forced to recall memories that were even more horrifying. Memories of the sexual abuse her father had subjected her to from the age of 3, which her mind had locked away for over twenty years. And memories of all the other horrific incidents from her childhood that she'd dared not remember until then.During the months that Katie remained in the psychiatric hospital, the locked doors in her mind gradually opened, releasing the trauma from her past and finally enabling her to start to understand the reason for her self-disgust.This is Katie's story – the sometimes harrowing but ultimately inspiring true story of her journey as she comes to terms with memories too painful to remember but impossible to forget.

    I am more afraid of her than ever...I get in more trouble for anything I do or say. Now I find that I'm always in trouble and I don't know why. Now that David is gone, I'm afraid that she will try to kill me, like she tried to kill him. I'm afraid that she will treat me like an animal like she did him. I'm afraid that now I'm her IT. The Pelzer family's secret life of fear and abuse was first revealed in Dave Pelzer's inspiring New York Times bestseller, A Child Called "It," followed by The Lost Child and A Man Called Dave. Here, for the first time, Richard Pelzer tells the courageous and moving story of his abusive childhood. From tormenting his brother David to becoming himself the focus of his mother's wrath to his ultimate liberation-here is a horrifying glimpse at what existed behind closed doors in the Pelzer home. Equally important, Richard Pelzer's touching account is a testament to the strength of the human heart and its capacity to triumph over almost unimaginable trauma.

    Offaly.Though the home was dysfunctional and all the children suffered at the hands of their parents, Kenneth and Patrick were singled out for horrific abuse at the hands of their mother.Starved, beaten and sent out to steal, their story is a catalogue of abuse. It also implicates the authorities, who had pages upon pages of reports on their situation, and yet never stepped in.

    But as time passed, David discovered the other side of Thurston Crow, the ex-con with his own code of ethics, one that justified cruelty, violence, lies—even murder. Intimidating David with beatings, Thurston coerced his son into doing his criminal bidding. David’s mom, too mentally ill to care for her children, couldn’t protect him.Through sheer determination, David managed to get into college and achieve professional success. When he finally found the courage to refuse his father’s criminal demands, he unwittingly triggered a plot of revenge that would force him into a deadly showdown with Thurston Crow. David would have only twenty-four hours to outsmart his father—the brilliant, psychotic man who bragged that the three years he spent in the notorious San Quentin State Prison had been the easiest time of his life.Raw and palpable, The Pale-Faced Lie is an inspirational story about the power of forgiveness and the strength of the human spirit.

    At age 13, she was sent to Kendall House in Gravesend, Kent, a home which soon became her prison and worst nightmare. Teresa found herself a victim of a terrible regime: she was injected with dangerously high doses of drugs and sexually abused. As a result of this cruel and vicious treatment—accompanied by punishments such as 163 days spent in solitary confinement—it was not long before Teresa began to harm herself and even attempt to take her life. After three years of hell, Teresa thought her nightmare was over but another was about to begin. Teresa survived, however, and today she works to fight against a corrupt social care system. She has taken her case of abuse and drugging to parliament, and is fighting to prevent many more children from suffering at the hands of unethical doctors and abusive foster parents.

    Betrayed by her mother in the most horrific manner, and abused by her ‘uncle’, she had to fight to survive the demons of her past.Cassie couldn’t remember when the abuse began, but from an early age, she knew that her life was different from other children. Her mother made it clear that she wasn’t wanted, she wasn’t loved and He said that he was her friend, that this was his way of showing her that she was special.With no one else to turn to, finally, she found the courage to speak out, to tell her mother what he did to her. But her mother wouldn’t listen, and with horror, Cassie was to discover exactly who her abuser was, and why she would never be heard.I Did Tell, I Did is the incredible story of a girl who was betrayed by everyone who should have loved her, and how she overcame the pain to find happiness and love, and to learn how to live with her past.

    I knew one called Bernie.He groomed me and led me away from home." It's been all over the news lately. Teenagers running away from home. Groomed and snatched from the nest by predators, before they get chance to spread their wings.Regardless of culture or social class, it's happening everywhere; online, in schools, clubs and societies.It happened to me, Moll.This is my true story, a harrowing account of my stolen youth, and my journey to take it back. A story of the ones who overlooked my situation, and a story dedicated to those who made a difference to my life.I lived in that squalid mobile home for two and a half years with my abuser. I even married him because I felt I had no way out. From the mind games of my father, to the open arms of Bernie, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place.I was helpless for a short time, but never hopeless.

    Her painful early life, however, was quite different. Regina and her four siblings survived an abusive and painful childhood only to find themselves faced with the challenges of the foster-care system and intermittent homelessness in the shadows of Manhattan and the Hamptons.

    Just twelve, she’s tall, skinny, and weak. It’s four o’clock, and she hasn’t been allowed to eat anything all day. Her mother, on the other hand, seems curiously excited. She's about to suggest open-heart surgery on her child to "get to the bottom of this." She checks her teeth for lipstick and, as the doctor enters, shoots the girl a warning glance. This child will not ruin her plans.SickenedFrom early childhood, Julie Gregory was continually X-rayed, medicated, and operated on—in the vain pursuit of an illness that was created in her mother’s mind. Munchausen by proxy (MBP) is the world’s most hidden and dangerous form of child abuse, in which the caretaker—almost always the mother—invents or induces symptoms in her child because she craves the attention of medical professionals. Many MBP children die, but Julie Gregory not only survived, she escaped the powerful orbit of her mother's madness and rebuilt her identity as a vibrant, healthy young woman.Sickened is a remarkable memoir that speaks in an original and distinctive Midwestern voice, rising to indelible scenes in prose of scathing beauty and fierce humor. Punctuated with Julie's actual medical records, it re-creates the bizarre cocoon of her family's isolated double-wide trailer, their wild shopping sprees and gun-waving confrontations, the astonishing naïveté of medical professionals and social workers. It also exposes the twisted bonds of terror and love that roped Julie's family together—including the love that made a child willing to sacrifice herself to win her mother's happiness. The realization that the sickness lay in her mother, not in herself, would not come to Julie until adulthood. But when it did, it would strike like lightning. Through her painful metamorphosis, she discovered the courage to save her own life—and, ultimately, the life of the girl her mother had found to replace her. Sickened takes us to new places in the human heart and spirit. It is an unforgettable story, unforgettably told.

    You must mind the one taking care of you, but she's not your mama." Ashley Rhodes-Courter spent nine years of her life in fourteen different foster homes, living by those words. As her mother spirals out of control, Ashley is left clinging to an unpredictable, dissolving relationship, all the while getting pulled deeper and deeper into the foster care system. Painful memories of being taken away from her home quickly become consumed by real-life horrors, where Ashley is juggled between caseworkers, shuffled from school to school, and forced to endure manipulative,humiliating treatment from a very abusive foster family. In this inspiring, unforgettable memoir, Ashley finds the courage to succeed - and in doing so, discovers the power of her own voice.

    Seven men, all from the town’s Pakistani heritage community, were jailed for selling vulnerable young girls for sex. The convictions made national news, but for one girl the chilling headlines were all too real.      Holly Archer was just fourteen when her life changed forever after becoming embroiled in a frightening web of exploitation and abuse. Enduring countless violent rapes and death threats, she was forced to sleep with several men a night. As her abusers’ grip tightened, she fell into despair, twice becoming pregnant. Hours after her last GCSE exam, she took an overdose in a desperate attempt to end the nightmare that had become her life.      Her escape eventually came when, old enough to leave home, she fled to Birmingham. She moved house every six months, fearing her abusers would hunt her down. She eventually found the strength to return to Telford shortly after giving birth to a daughter, around the same time the police launched an investigation into the exploitation of young girls in the town. She underwent hours of rigorous police interviews but in the end decided she could not face her abusers in court.      Nonetheless, seven men were convicted of sex offences and jailed as a result of the investigation. Holly slowly began to pick up the pieces of her life and was given a job with a rape prevention charity. Having survived her ordeal, she now tells her full, shocking story for the first time.