Customer Reviews

Not My Child: A Mother Confronts Her Childs Sexual Abuse

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

it must be nice to sit there from a place of security and criticize the testimony of a parent who experienced the ultimate violation of her responsibility to her child. to criticize the actions of investigators and prosecutors who were watching their own worst nightmares unfold in front of their own eyes. to judge human beings who were forced to hear unspeakable things about months and months of bizarre sexual abuse of children.

you could never sit in a courtroom for months and months and hear testimony about your own child that chilled your bones and broke your heart. you could not live with the guilt of having trusted the care of your child to an unbelievably sick person.

you could not survive hearing testimony about kelly stripping the kids naked, covering them with peanut butter, and instructing them to lick it off one another's bodies and then remember the time you found peanut butter behind your daughter's ears while giving her a bath one night all those months ago. ask my dad how he survived that experience.

how dare you?

it's people like you that pedophiles like kelly depend upon to not believe what they really did because it sounds too crazy. indeed you feel sorry for their ordeal at the hands of dozens of lying children and their maniacal parents who are so eager to believe that all 4-year-olds know how a tampon is used. you probably believe, as kelly's lawyers asserted at her trial, that "women don't do this sort of thing."

i'm sure you are pleased to know that kelly is now free to do it all again.
however, just you're wrong and i'm right, i suggest you never leave your children alone with her.

i am a wee care kid. believe me, it all happened.
despite everything kelly did to me,
i am a survivor.
despite everything that kelly did to us,
we are not ashamed - but you should be.

The reviewers who gave a measly star when rating this book clearly did not read it. And why would they? Why would they want to learn of the very real and long-lasting damage that pedophiles inflict upon their victims and their victims' families? This book is very well written and explains so many things that I did not know or understand regarding how children and their parents cope with sexual abuse.

If all you ever learned of a molestation case was the "not guilty" verdict--or that the verdict was overturned--it'd be understandable to believe that the accused perpetrator may have actually been innocent and that perhaps the children had lied, or were confused, or had misinterpreted an innocent touch, or were pressured by prosecutors, parents and therapists to give answers that suited an agenda. But when you read a book detailing the similar and profound behavioral changes parents had observed in their children several months prior to any knowledge, disclosure or allegation of abuse, it would be very difficult not to conclude that all those children had in common their subjection to some form of recurring trauma. Unfortunately, the parents hadn't discussed and compared their kids' strange behaviors during the previous months, for perhaps if they had they would have suspected a common denominator. The author was shocked by her daughter's exhibitions of violence and felt too embarrassed to tell other parents about them for fear that her daughter would be shunned.

When rumors of sexual abuse at the Wee Care preschool began circulating, no parent wanted to believe her own child had been a victim. None of the parents thought their kids could be molested without them becoming aware of it; they thought for sure they knew their children well enough and that their children would tell them if anyone ever tried to hurt them. But fear, guilt, shame and embarrassment are what often keep children from telling, even when parents do ask direct questions. Children typically will not disclose abuse until they have been removed from the abusive environment and feel that it is safe for them to do so. Once aware of the abuse, the parents felt incredibly guilty for having been unable to protect their children and for not having recognized their children's strange behavior as symptoms of abuse and as expressions of inner turmoil. Sexual abuse simply had not been on anyone's radar. And I doubt that today's parents, twenty-five years later, are any more aware of this very real threat or that they would be any more likely to consider it as the cause for their children's sudden and drastic changes in temperament and conduct.

All parents hoped their child's involvement had been minimal. Some even assumed at first that perhaps their children had merely been witnesses to the abuse. Every parent hoped her child had been spared the more disturbing or disgusting experiences. While some parents did not want to know the exact extent of what their children had suffered, others couldn't bear not knowing just what their children had been forced to endure. Had a child only seen a naked Kelly Michaels playing "Jingle Bells" on the piano? Had only some been forced to play the naked dog-pile game? Did every child have knives, forks and spoons inserted into his rectum or her vagina? Had only a few boys and girls been forced to lick Kelly's peanut-butter coated genitals? Had all the kids been required to eat a piece of the cake Kelly made out of excrement? Not every child would admit the full extent of his involvement. One child who displayed dramatic symptoms of abuse steadfastly denied that anything had happened to her.

To suggest that a group of parents--with the help of overzealous therapists and manipulative Division of Youth and Family Services (DYFS) social workers--either deliberately concocted false allegations or were somehow overcome by "hysteria" that left them unfoundedly convinced and eager to believe their children had been sexually abused is to willingly ignore the unusual behavioral changes exhibited by the child-victims and to overlook the confusion, denial, outrage, pain, guilt, depression and isolation experienced by the victims' parents. If there is anyone who thinks that parents just can't wait to jump on the my-kid-was-molested bandwagon, this book should be a real eye-opener.

Ms. Crowley's story is gut-wrenching. Readers will be shocked, it's hard to imagine how these atrocities could occur. It fills you with a sense of disbelief - and it should. Unfortunately, the case against Kelly Michaels was just one in a string of ritual sex abuse cases during the 1980's that has been disproven. Kelly Michaels' conviction was later overturned. I don't expect Ms. Crowley to believe in Kelly Michael's innocence, she's spent nearly 20 years believing the version of events given to her by the inept investigators in this case. I'm sure her daughter believes she is a child abuse survivor as well. It must have been horrible for the families of these children to hear all the things that supposedly happened to their children and they have years of guilt and anger that they've dealt with because of this. The evidence does not support the claims of the investigators, though. The saddest part about this story is that all these lives were sent into turmoil needlessly.

I cannot say anything better than the previous reviewer. Kelly was rightly found to be innocent, but not until she spent about 5 years falsely imprisoned. That is the real story we need to hear.

this book is really good and made me feel like i was in patricias place. i dont know what i would do in her situation. its so sad to hear stories like these, but it keeps us, the readers, more aware of our surroundings.