Child Molesters, Child Rapists and Child Sexual Abuse by Lynn Daugherty

Some time ago, I reviewed a short book called Voices of Survivors by Lynn Daugherty, which was a short but very impactful book containing the accounts of victims of child abuse.  After emailing her to let her know I posted a review, and more emails back-and-forth, I ended up with another book: Child Molesters, Child Rapists and Child Sexual Abuse.

The book is about, and I quote: "more informational than my self-help books and can get a little “academic” at times, as there is a lot of information to present. It is still written in (hopefully) clear and understandable language though, rather than in psychological jargon. This fairly concise book is meant to help former victims and the general public understand more about how child sexual abuse takes place and what motivates abusers. The more everyone understands about this difficult subject, the better able we are to protect children from abuse. A major value of the book to former victims is that it reinforces the idea that they were abused, not because there was something “wrong” with them, but because there was something “wrong” with the abuser."

While the book is quite short, it is very informational. It has a total of 9 chapters covering subjects such as who abuses the children, how does it happen and treatment of abusers.In addition, it has short accounts from the point of the abuser, something was creepy (because I didn't want to know what was in their mind) and informative at the same time.

I think that this book is useful for understanding child sexual abuse. It covers things like the factors/pre-conditions for abuse and the types of abuse, which is something we should know, because if not, there might be a case going on around us and we'd be totally unaware.

This is really not a pleasant topic for me to write about. I'd rather be writing about happy stuff, or at least leaving the unhappy stuff to the realm of fiction (and I just know I wrote similar sentiments in the earlier blog post). But well, this book does have its place, and I don't regret taking the time out to read it. (I know the review's short, but a short awkward review is better than a long awkward one right?)