Ten years older, he promised to take care of her. Sammy thought she was in love, but in reality she was being groomed by a ringleader of Britain's most notorious child sex ring.Just A Child tells the heartbreaking story of how a young girl from Rotherham was abused by her drug-dealing 'boyfriend', eventually giving birth to his baby, right under the nose of the very authorities who were meant to protect her. When reality dawned and Sammy realised she was one of countless vulnerable child victims - many of whom were trafficked around the north of England - she took it upon herself to blow the whistle and save others from a similar fate.Thanks to Sammy's bravery, the gang was fully exposed, as well as the authorities that did little to help her. Her shocking account of how these events came to pass will enrage and sadden but, above all, it will offer hope and show why this must never happen again.

    A report revealed that, since the 1990s, up to 1,400 young girls in the town had been regularly abused by sex gangs, predominantly comprised of Pakistani men. As the media descended on the small Yorkshire town, Sarah Wilson watched with horror and relief as her voice was finally heard after years of abuse.Sarah was just eleven years old when she was befriended by a group of older men. Bullied at school, naive and vulnerable, the gifts and attention they lavished on her were what she craved, she just wanted to belong. But soon she was hooked on alcohol and drugs, and then they owned her. She was just twelve years old when she was bundled into a car by a man in his thirties and forced to have sex with him. Soon, the gang were driving her to places where she was raped by scores of men.Falling through the system, from social services to school, no-one was able to help her. She ‘escaped’ when she became too old for the men at nearly sixteen.Finally a victim of the Rotherham scandal tells her story in the hope that other young girls will not fall prey to the same evil that she endured.

    but she will destroy you and everything around you, piece by piece.' - Hope Virgo. For four years, Hope managed to keep it hidden, keeping dark secrets from friends and family. But then, on 17th November 2007, Hope's world changed forever. She was admitted to a mental health hospital. Her skin was yellowing, her heart was failing. She was barely recognizable. Forced to leave her family and friends, the hospital became her home. Over the next year, at her lowest ebb, Hope faced the biggest challenge of her life. She had to find the courage to beat her anorexia. In Stand Tall Little Girl, Hope shares her harrowing, yet truly inspiring, journey.

    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.

    Yet the World Health Organisation estimates that up to 40 million children are abused every year and according to Women's Aid, 1 in 3 women has been beaten, coerced into sex or otherwise abused in her lifetime.In this shocking memoir, Cassie Moore gives a very open and honest description of how she suffered and survived a lifetime of abuse. She describes:- The sexual, physical and emotional abuse she suffered at the hands of her Stepfather and Mother, who then sold her into marriage at the age of 16 - The heartbreak she suffered when she naively left her 22 month old baby behind when she fled to London with the man she fell in love with, only to be abused by him for a further 23 years- The self-loathing, depression and despair she felt during those lonely years - The enormous sacrifices she had to make to save herself and start a new life

    Denise endured emotional and physical cruelty and molestation at the hands of her mother and her drunken boyfriends. In an environment full of toxic emotions and violence, her survival depended on navigating daily, a safe passage through the basest of human behaviours. An absent, paedophilic father could not be trusted, and her older brother fled, as soon as he was able. Alone, in this domestic battlefield, she faced an unpredictable psychotic mother, regular beatings and torture, all against a backdrop of fear that she would be killed. But throughout Denise kept alive dreams of escaping. This book covers the early years of her life and is an affecting and inspirational book of the horrors of child abuse and the steadfast determination of one child to survive.

    Danielle spoke only in grunts and yelps, walked on her tiptoes, was not toilet-trained and drank from a bottle. She was almost seven years old. But hope and help were waiting for this little girl. In October 2007, Bernie and Diane Lierow, a hard-working couple with five boys of their own, adopted her and utterly transformed her life. This book tells the moving story of how the Lierows rescued Dani and helped her recover to the point where she can not only communicate, something once thought impossible, but can say of herself, "I pretty." Dani's Story was featured on Oprah and the subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning article published by the St. Petersburg Times. The Lierows describe their struggle to adopt Dani, how they bonded with her and made a home for her, how they satisfied her craving for contact and stimuli, how Dani began to overcome her severe learning disabilities, how she learned she no longer had to steal food, and how their son Willie may be the greatest brother ever. Charting a perilous journey from hardship to hope, a new family, and a second chance at life, Dani's Story is a book you cannot put down and will never forget.

    Once married, however, she acquired a persistent pain that led to destructive drugs and patronizing psychiatry, ending in an ineffective but irrevocable surgery. There would be no children; in herself she found instead one novel, and then another.

    But when she was just 11 years old, her older brother began to sexually abuse her. After four years, Carol managed to escape – and ran away from home.Picked up by social services they place her at Aston Hall in Derby; a psychiatric hospital now infamous for the ghoulish ‘truth serum’ experiments it carried out on children. Over three years, Carol was stripped, sedated, assaulted and raped by Kenneth Milner, the doctor in charge.Eventually she is released back into the community, aged 18, and has a daughter. But the baby is taken away for adoption and Carol’s trauma intensifies.In 2010 Carol finally plucked up the courage to speak out about the abuse she suffered – and received justice, at last.In The Asylum Carol tells the full story of how she overcame unimaginable suffering, to find the happiness and solace she has today as a mother and grandmother.

    The brief meeting between these two young women resonates with Nicky. It is a brush with the kind of darkness into which a human life can descend, and an experience that powers her own resolve not to let her abuse define and shape her, but to strive for a positive life of her own. Left as a newborn in a box outside Stoke City Football ground, her grandparents took her into their home. But instead of finding a sanctuary, Nicky was subjected to horrific sexual abuse throughout her childhood. In 1951, when Nicky was six years old, her glamorous-looking estranged mother arrived on the doorstep to `rescue' her. But Nicky's hopes of a safe and loving family were very soon smashed, and her world became darker still... Nicky spent years as a homeless alcoholic, living on the street, in and out of prison before eventually finding a new way forward through her love of art. Now an internationally renowned London artist, hers is a compelling story, carried along by her rare spirit of survival against the odds. This book details an extraordinary woman's rise from the horror of a deeply damaging childhood to a new, creative and independent life. Her story is one of hope, for herself and for other abused children.

     Sophie Jenkins is living a happy life in the idyllic Dorset countryside when she meets Martin Brett, the man who will go on to abuse her and haunt her dreams for years to come. A momentary act of neglect leads to a horrible series of events that leaves her changed forever. Badly let down by the adults entrusted to care for her, Sophie’s life begins to spiral downwards. However, Sophie’s message is ultimately one of hope and empowerment. She is in the process of rebuilding her life when fate leads her to encounter her childhood attacker once again. The story ends with a truly shocking climax. WARNING: This book is based upon a true story of child abuse and contains passages that some readers may find disturbing. All names and places have been changed to protect the identities of the innocent. For every book sold or borrowed, a donation will be made to the NSPCC (Cover photograph is posed by a model and is used for illustrative purposes only.)

    All this, in addition to raising her three biological sons and two adopted daughters. What would motivate someone to give herself over to constant, largely uncompensated chaos? For Harrison, the answer is easy.Another Place at the Table is the story of life at our social services' front lines, centered on three children who, when they come together in Harrison's home, nearly destroy it. It is the frank first-person story of a woman whose compassionate best intentions for a child are sometimes all that stand between violence and redemption.

    She refuses to give her name, and gives birth to a baby girl. But immediately after the birth, she disappears, leaving the baby alone in the hospital. The child, named Dani after the midwife who delivered her, is put up for adoption.Twelve years later Dani is living with a foster family. A vulnerable and unworldly girl, Dani is an inconvenience and always being blamed for things that aren't her fault. After being wrongly accused of performing an act of petty childish spite, Dani is sent to a children's home. The home is full of difficult children, who bully and victimise Dani. Terrified of both the children and the grown-ups, she runs away.Dani spends several nights on the streets of London, begging for food. When a stranger offers her something to eat and a place to sleep, she accepts gratefully. But what she does not know is that this man is a brutal pimp who tries to drag Dani into a violent, drug-fuelled world of prostitution. Soon she is plunged into an unimaginable nightmare of abuse that she truly believes will never end.But there is one person out there searching for Dani; one person who has her best interests at heart; one person who will do anything to save her. It's just a matter of whether she can find her in time…

    Instinctively, I reached out my arms to stop my fall and ended up grabbing the live fence. My hands clamped around the thin wires, and my body collapsed to the ground as the electricity coursed through it. I opened my eyes and saw my mother standing over me with the strangest smile on her face. “Oh, my God, I’m going to die!” I thought in panic.Imagine never being able to close your eyes and remember the feel of your mother’s arms wrapped around you. Now imagine closing your eyes and remembering your mother’s tears splashing down on your face as she is on top of you, crying as she is trying to choke you to death. My mother left me these memories and many more during my traumatic childhood. After many years of struggling with trying to understand “Why Me?” I took back control of my life and started saying, “It was me, now what am I going to do?” The answer is my book, “Why Me?”. It is my childhood journey through the terrors of physical and mental abuse from first grade until the day I moved out. It is my way of letting the world know what was really going on behind closed doors.

    It would emerge that, like Vicky, 220 other women who were diagnosed with cervical cancer were not informed that a clinical audit -carried out by the national screen programme CervicalCheck - had revised their earlier, negative smear tests. Their cancers could possibly have been preventable.Since then, Vicky has become women's voice for justice on the issue, and her system-changing activism has made her a household name.In her memoir Overcoming, Vicky shares her remarkable personal story, from a life-threatening accident in early adulthood through to motherhood, a battle with depression, her devastating later discovery that her cancer had returned in shocking circumstances - and the ensuing detective-like scrutiny of events that led the charge for her history-making legal action.An inspiring story of rare resilience and power, Overcoming is an account of how one woman can move mountains - even when she is fighting for her own life - and of finding happiness and strength in the toughest of times.'Calls to mind the work of Emilie Pine, or the memoir by Maggie O'Farrell, I Am, I Am, I Am ... Overcoming is more than the retelling of an extraordinary life. Its pacing and gentleness leaves plenty of room for tears and for reflection' Irish Independent