2007-11-21 The Courage to do what exactly?

I first heard about this apalling book fairly recently when my partner was arrested and charged in relation to allegations of sexual abuse made by his younger sister which dated back some 30yrs to when he was just 6yrs old. She also made various other abuse allegations against another 6 people, some were other members of the family, others were not. As a result, our lives have been devastated culminating in the removal of our children by Social Services "for a little holiday".

During the course of the past months it transpired that, until the accuser went into therapy and was recommended this book to read, she was unable to recall any detail of the alleged abuse. Below are a couple of examples of the sort of advice the book offers:

'Many women who were abused don't have memories, and some never get any. This doesn't mean that they weren't abused', and 'if you think you were abused, and your life shows the symptoms, then you were'."

These so called 'symptoms' are wide ranging and extremely common. If I were of a mindset which made me vulnerable to suggestion, as I am sure many readers of such books are, by the time I had completed the book and carried out it's recommendations, I am certain that I would have convinced myself that I am a 'survivor'. I too would have been able to recall certain detail however incomplete or vague, convincing myself that the cuddle on my father's knee was more sinister than I first thought. I too would have filled in the gaps using my imagination (as the book recomends) and all the while these newly 'recovered memories' being reinforced and built upon by unqualified therapists.

Is it not possible that if you can not remember being abused as a child then perhaps it is simply that you were not? 'The Courage to Heal' would have us believe otherwise.

A shocking book which feeds into readers vulnerabilities, is irresponsible in it's content and which could ultimately be the cause of a very different kind of abuse, namely the thousands of adults and children on the receiving end of false allegations.