"Broken" by Shy Keenan

The book "Broken" is about the life of Shy Keenan. She was born in 1963 and actually her real name is Karen. We learn later in the book that her stepfather decided to call her Shy because he used to say that she was a shy little girl. When she turned 4, her mother, Jennifer, remarried Stanley who became Karen's stepfather. Her new stepfather systematically raped her from that young age and sold her to other paedophiles. Once, she almost got killed by a group of abusers. She was forced to give men oral sex and was beaten up if she didn't do so. She had to do it to be able to eat, drink, sleep and have clothes. Her little sister also suffered from abuse and Karen used to protect her by taking her place when Stanley asked something to her dear little sister. Karen tried to tell her mother what has been happening to her, but Jennifer would just ignore it and beat her up for being naughty, dirty and bad. She would never talk to her and show any sign of affection unless she needed her to be kind to social workers or to lie or to act as if she was a little girl with special needs. This way, Jennifer could get money from the government. Once, Karen just burst out and told the social worker what she had been forced to do all this time but Stanley immediately invented a story saying that she was the one who tried to seduce him and that she made sexual advances towards him. The social worker believed him! When, at the age of 11, she had already suffered two miscarriages and an STD, the doctors didn't even question her parents. Nobody ever believed Shy, until in 2000 she took part in a Newsnight TV programme and secretely recorded Stanley admitting the abuse. This book describes her childhood and teenage years and in the end her stepfather is finally brought to justice which has been her battle since then. She now compaigns for justice for victims of childhood sexual abuse. I, at first, hesitated a lot about reading this book because I knew it was going to be shocking and hard to read. However, I thought that child abuse is a reality that we have to face and be able to talk about. I think it's good to write such books to open the eyes of the world even though it must have been really really difficult for Shy to live those moments again when writing the book. She is a wonderful woman who describes herself not as a victim, neither as a survivor, but as someone who tries to work things out. This book is even more heart-breaking because when describing things, Shy uses terms that are very childlike and we, readers, see the events with her way of thinking as a child. For instance, she refers to the abuse as "The horrible" and her life is basically made of up of this and of the expectation of it. This story is sad, revolting and we constantly wish Shy would say something. We want to tell her: "Shy, tell them what Stanley has done to you, say that you are not crazy, tell those or those people because they are the ones you can trust!" But as Stanley psychologically manipulated her, she just couldn't. It is shocking that this has been going on for so long without public knowledge or even worse, with so many people looking the other way. Imagine you are hated and beaten by the two people who are supposed to look after you and to protect you...