I am a writer who has written an assortment of over a hundred and seventy different articles, poems, and books. I worked for thirty five years as a psychologist and my late wife, Rosie Larner, was a social worker and lecturer. We have both dealt with cases of domestic abuse and have recognised the extent of the problem worldwide and the misery that it causes. We offer these tales under the pen-name of Rosy Stewart to show the diversity of the problems and to bring hope to the sufferers with the hope of resolution of each case to reach a wider audience.
Action-packed stories from the heart of a London women’s refuge.
As a survivor of domestic violence, Sue has vowed to help others as the manager in her refuge. Tough and experienced, she is still not prepared for the strength of the situations she will meet, as the challenges are more varied than in her own experience. She teams up with one woman violently disfigured by her husband who then disappeared. Knowing it will be dangerous, they nevertheless set out to track him down and bring him to justice. They encounter many other women along the way that they must save, but who present them with difficult choices. Finally, they themselves become the hunted.
The story is told as a memoir in first person. What I like about this is that it tells of a period in a Derbyshire working class home in the 1940s and 1950s.
The description of the family environment is very realistic and one is drawn in immediately and carried along by the love in the home is and the playful the antics of the children. However, it soon develops into a novel of a young girl who runs away from that home because her mother becomes mentally ill and her father doesn’t know how to help his wife and ends up severely beating her.
It continues into what she does on the streets of London and how she eventually ends up in a women’s refuge. It is a lesson on how things can dramatically change.
Until 1971, female victims of domestic violence were expected to 'kiss and make up' with their husbands, hide their black eyes and bruises, and bear the shame that somehow their partners' brutality was their fault. Chiswick Women's Aid was Europe's first ever refuge for what were then called 'battered women', and Jenny Smith was one of the first females who bravely made their way to this much-needed safe house. Desperate, and in fear for her life and the welfare of her two small children, Jenny had fled her dangerously schizophrenic partner, carrying only a few possessions. In the Chiswick shelter,…
This is told in the voice of a young girl living in a household of domestic violence in the 1960s in UK.
She is regarded as presenting difficulties for her parents right from the beginning with her difficult birth. It is written in short scenes and excerpts from her childhood. She adores her mother, but she is sexually assaulted by one of her mother’s boyfriends. The writing of this is realistic as seen by an innocent four-year-old girl.
When the mother marries another boyfriend the family dynamics change from being kind at first to much stricter. It is clear that the little girl will develop psychological problems in later life.
Cursed by her grandmother and trapped in domestic violence in 1960s Britain, Evelyn must find a way to protect her five young daughters. Aware that her firstborn, Kim, is doomed to repeat her own disastrous life choices, Evelyn places her in the care of one of her admirers to protect her from her fate.
Meanwhile, her daughter Bess carries a deep-rooted sense of shame and guilt that her birth nearly killed her beloved mother. Subjected to sexual abuse, she tries to make sense of her feelings and her place within the secretive family she grows up in, desperately seeking love…
This is a non-fiction book about how domestic abuse can easily turn into murder.
The author is an authority on cases of coercive control, stalking, and domestic abuse. Case studies are used frequently and the writing is clear and easy to read quickly. I found some of the concepts echoed some minor bullying that I was subjected to at school.
It begins with a typical scene where a victim of domestic abuse will not report the incident and will not get into the ambulance even though they are badly injured. The author says that it was this case which opened her eyes to the complexities of domestic abuse incidents.
The book debunks some common myths which perpetrators use as excuses, such as ‘crime of passion’. It describes eight stages of coercive control which can often lead to homicide. These are a whirlwind of commitment in the early stages of a relationship, through the escalation of control to planning homicide.
'Groundbreaking' OBSERVER
'Blows assumptions about abusive relationships out of the water' CAITLIN MORAN
'Offers a strategy for intervention that would save lives' INDEPENDENT
Every four days in the UK, a woman is killed by her partner or ex-partner - and in the past year, domestic abuse has become an epidemic.
For thirty years, Jane Monckton Smith has been fighting to change this. A former police officer and internationally renowned professor of public protection, she has developed her ground-breaking research into an eight-stage homicide timeline, laying out identifiable stages in which coercive relationships can escalate to violence and murder.
Drawing on…
I think this is a basic skills book from which I was able to refresh my own knowledge.
This is an excellent workbook for therapists dealing with domestic abuse. It shows the real statistics behind domestic abuse, and begins by debunking myths, then explores the long-term effects on the survivors including the cycle of abuse in families.
It itemises therapeutic approaches and how people can be helped. It explores ways in which people can be helped to reconnect with their own identity and find themselves again after the terrible period of trauma.
Counselling Survivors of Domestic Abuse explains how counsellors can facilitate recovery from domestic abuse within a secure, supportive therapeutic relationship.
There has been growing awareness in recent years of the impact and consequences of domestic abuse, especially the relationship between domestic abuse and mental health. To appreciate the nature of trauma caused by domestic abuse, professionals need to understand its complex nature and the psychobiological impact of repeated exposure to control and terror. This book examines the therapeutic techniques and specific challenges, such as secondary traumatic stress, faced by professionals when working with survivors of domestic abuse. The author stresses…
This is certainly a gripping tale as it gets going.
I was impressed by how it realistically shows abuse of children and abuse of women in different families in two different story threads that are tied together dramatically as a thriller. It is told from two points of view: Celia a mother who works in Citizen’s Advice, and Lucie the little girl she befriends.
It begins as a normal domestic scene with the two characters meeting by chance, but soon it develops into a thriller where Celia is suddenly hijacking at knifepoint whilst going about her business. It shows another aspect of violence against women where they can be suddenly assaulted by strangers.
My future hangs in the balance. They’re questioning both of us and every word I say matters. I need to be careful – it’s my word against his, and I can’t afford to lose…
Thirteen years ago. Teenager Lucie babysits our little son Henry. She’s like the daughter I never had. And she believes we’re the perfect family – just me, my husband and Henry.
But Lucie doesn’t really know what’s happening behind closed doors. Until one night, she sees something so awful she leaves. And my family is never the same again…
I'm the oldest granddaughter of Leora, who lost three sons during WWII. To learn what happened to them, I studied casualty and missing aircraft reports, missions reports, and read unit histories. I’ve corresponded with veterans who knew one of the brothers, who witnessed the bomber hit the water off New Guinea, and who accompanied one brother’s body home. I’m still in contact with the family members of two crew members on the bomber. The companion book, Leora’s Letters, is the family story of the five Wilson brothers who served, but only two came home.
The day the second atomic bomb was dropped, Clabe and Leora Wilson’s postman brought a telegram to their acreage near Perry, Iowa. One son was already in the U.S. Navy before Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Four more sons worked with their father, tenant farmers near Minburn until, one by one; all five sons were serving their country in the military–two in the Navy and three as Army Air Force pilots.
Only two sons came home.
Leora’s Letters is the compelling true account of a woman whose most tender hopes were disrupted by great losses. Yet she lived out four more decades with hope and resilience.
The day the second atomic bomb was dropped, Clabe and Leora Wilson’s postman brought a telegram to their acreage near Perry, Iowa. One son was already in the U.S. Navy before Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Four more sons worked with their father, tenant farmers near Minburn until, one by one, all five sons were serving their country in the military. The oldest son re-enlisted in the Navy. The younger three became U.S. Army Air Force pilots. As the family optimist, Leora wrote hundreds of letters, among all her regular chores, dispensing news and keeping up the morale of the…
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