Reclaiming Lives from Sexual Violence


Book Description

This book takes an innovative approach to using narrative therapy in counselling people who have been subject to childhood sexual abuse. Reclaiming Lives from Sexual Violence presents an illustrative case study of the authors, Tim the therapist in consultation with Dale the client, who was sexually abused as a child by a clergy member. The book is unique in documenting their therapeutic work using transcripts taken directly from their sessions together. This narrative approach invites the reader to consider different ways of engaging in therapy in order to challenge the dominant social discourses around masculinity and shame. Looking at shame from a position of value awareness rather than a deficit perspective, this book extends counselling to consider the individual experience as political and one that must be shared outside the one-to-one therapy environment. This will be an essential resource for beginning or established therapists and practitioners working with clients who have been victims of sexual violence.




Reclaiming Pleasure


Book Description

Go beyond surviving to reclaim your sexual self. If you have experienced sexual abuse, assault, harassment, or rape, you may feel disconnected from your sexual self—even if you’ve overcome the initial trauma of your experience. You are a survivor; but surviving is just the beginning. This book explores what comes next. Written by a psychotherapist and grounded in cutting-edge research, Reclaiming Pleasure picks up where other sexual trauma recovery books leave off. It offers practical tools to help you cultivate a sense of safety, security and trust in order to reclaim the vitality, pleasure and great sex you deserve. The book will also serve as your compass on a journey toward the rediscovery of desire, letting you explore what you want from others and for yourself. This groundbreaking book will help you: Understand the lasting mental, physical, sexual, and relational impacts of sexual trauma Move beyond feelings of shame Reclaim pleasure and reignite passion in your life Surviving is merely the first step in the process of recovery from sexual trauma. With this sex-positive and empowering guide, you are invited to take your recovery to the next level. You’ll feel emboldened by the desire for better sex, healthier relationships, and a more connected, pleasurable life.




Reclaiming Our Lives


Book Description

It is estimated that at least one in four or five women and one out of ten men was sexually abused as a child by a family member. Most of those people continue to suffer in adulthood because of undeserved guilt, anxiety, and shame. Reclaiming Our Lives, written by a survivor of abuse and a psychotherapist specializing in the treatment of adult survivors of abuse, uses interviews with survivors and a healing approach to track the adult problems and what to do about them. Issues of trust, power, control, sexuality, and intimacy are examined in detail. The book concludes with an alphabet of survival tactics and a fourteen-step guide for growth for the survivor.




Reclaiming Your Life After Rape


Book Description

This powerful client workbook is written in an encouraging and easy-to-understand style specifically for women who have been sexually assaulted and have developed chronic symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Clients learn how cognitive-behavioral therapy has helped other victims and how it can work for them. This book explains how to distinguish PTSD symptoms from other disorders and teaches powerful techniques for overcoming these symptoms. In writing this book, the authors aim to address two goals. First, they want to present information about PTSD and related problems in language understandable to nonprofessionals. This information will include a review of the studies on posttrauma problems and on the effectiveness of different treatments. They also describe why some survivors develop PTSD and others do not. The second goal of the book is to provide a detailed client workbook for the treatment of trauma-related problems, especially PTSD, to assist clients working with a therapist. The authors are aware of the fact that people have different problems and different needs. What works for one person may not work for another. Therefore, they describe several different treatment techniques. The book is organized around the different cognitive-behavioral techniques that have been studied and proven effective with women sufferers of PTSD following an assault. Throughout the book, the authors focus mainly on women who have been sexually assaulted and as a result developed chronic symptoms of PTSD, which have disturbed their daily functioning and cause them emotional distress. Most of the examples they use to demonstrate the cognitive-behavioral techniques are drawn from their experience in treating rape survivors. However, the cognitive-behavioral procedures outlined here have been as successful in helping women who have been sexually abused in childhood and adult female survivors of nonsexual assaults, like aggravated assault and robbery. Other survivors of traumas such as natural disasters and car accidents were also helped by this cognitive-behavioral approach.




Recovering from Child Abuse


Book Description

The damage you suffered may have been done in one terrible moment or over time. But the healing and the restoration will unfold at your pace, at a human pace. It unfolds as part of your story, and it unfolds over time. As a vulnerable child, instead of being protected, helped, and comforted, you were physically, emotionally, and/or ...




Beautiful Justice


Book Description

A story of healing and a guide to seeking justice after sexual abuse from Brooke Axtell, one of the foremost survivor experts on sexual assault, domestic violence, and human trafficking When Brooke Axtell was seven years old, her nanny subjected her to sex trafficking. Today, she is a champion and advocate for women around the world who have experienced sexual violence and trauma. Beautiful Justice shares Brooke's own gripping story, both the trauma of sex trafficking and also her pathway through healing, moving on, and reclaiming power. Along the way, she imparts warm wisdom for others who have experienced similar violence, providing lessons from her own life and from the thousands of women, advocates, and lawmakers she's spoken with. Relying on her own experiences and a keen awareness of public policy, she provides a clear-eyed awareness of the ways that our culture and government work against women experiencing violence around the world. Inspiring and powerfully redemptive, Brooke encourages readers to take part in a creative resistance as a path to justice.




Want


Book Description

“Peters takes readers on her own personal journey from trauma to reconnecting with her body, emotions, and eventually her own desire and sexuality.” —Xanet Pailet, bestselling author of Living an Orgasmic Life We know, increasingly, how common and devastating sexual violence is for women, but we don’t always talk about how survivors can recover from the trauma and return to desire, sexuality, trust, and pleasure. Want is the story of how Julie Peters did just that—and how you can, too. In the years after the assault, Julie was in what she calls the fog of trauma: the colorless, tasteless experience of barely getting through the day. No one—not counsellors, support groups, or other survivors—could give her any advice about how to find the desire that could bring her back to joy, intimacy, and connection. She had to make it up on her own. In Want, Julie tells the story of getting from the devastation of trauma to living a full life in eight sometimes challenging, often bumbling, and occasionally delightful steps. Your loved ones may not know how to support you, but they can learn more about your experiences and how to walk alongside you through this book, just as you can learn how to recover from the trauma you’ve experienced. Want offers a window into one person’s experience of recovery—plus the happy ending we all need to know is possible after trauma. “With unwavering honesty, penetrating insight, warmth, humor, and aplomb, she lays out strategies for a tangible, nourishing, and vitally ferocious self-love.” —Jeremy Radin, poet, author of Dear Sal




Rethinking Rufus


Book Description

Rethinking Rufus is the first book-length study of sexual violence against enslaved men. Scholars have extensively documented the widespread sexual exploitation and abuse suffered by enslaved women, with comparatively little attention paid to the stories of men. However, a careful reading of extant sources reveals that sexual assault of enslaved men also occurred systematically and in a wide variety of forms, including physical assault, sexual coercion, and other intimate violations. To tell the story of men such as Rufus--who was coerced into a sexual union with an enslaved woman, Rose, whose resistance of this union is widely celebrated--historian Thomas A. Foster interrogates a range of sources on slavery: early American newspapers, court records, enslavers' journals, abolitionist literature, the testimony of formerly enslaved people collected in autobiographies and in interviews, and various forms of artistic representation. Foster's sustained examination of how black men were sexually violated by both white men and white women makes an important contribution to our understanding of masculinity, sexuality, the lived experience of enslaved men, and the general power dynamics fostered by the institution of slavery. Rethinking Rufus illuminates how the conditions of slavery gave rise to a variety of forms of sexual assault and exploitation that affected all members of the community.




Shattered


Book Description

In April 1998, Debra Puglisi Sharp -- wife, nurse, and mother of teenage twins -- was tending the roses in her garden when a factory worker with a cocaine habit slipped in through an open door and waited for her to come in. Nino, her husband of twenty-five years, got in the way and was shot. The man then attacked and raped Debra, placed her in the trunk of his car, and drove away. Kept hog-tied in her abductor's house, Debra finally learned of her husband's murder from a newscast on a radio that the man blared to muffle her screams while he was out. After five excruciating days, Debra's mounting rage at her captor -- and the wrenching thought of her children burying their father alone -- gave her the courage and strength she desperately needed. She loosened her ties, groped her way to the phone...and dialed 911. Shattered is an indelible portrait of hope, determination, and the agonizing journey back to life. Struggling to heal from her horrendous ordeal and the devastating loss of her husband, Debra also had to endure an agonizing court trial, the raw grief of her children, and her own crippling fear. But through her work in hospice care and as an advocate for victims of violence and trauma, she has slowly discovered the measure of her own strength. A compelling survival story -- tragic and ultimately heroic -- Shattered represents one woman's attempts to make sense of a senseless crime.




Reclaiming the Night-Time Economy


Book Description

This book explores young adults' experiences and understandings of sexualised violence within licensed venues. Although anecdotally common, unwanted sexual attention in pubs and clubs has been the focus of relatively little criminological analysis. This text provides the first exploration of how and why unwanted sexual attention occurs in licensed venues. Using wide-ranging research from over two hundred participants, Fileborn argues that what 'counts' as unwanted sexual attention is highly context-dependent and situated within a complex assemblage of a venue's culture, environment, and community. Dealing with issues such as the roles gender, sexuality, space, and social belonging play in shaping young adults' experiences, this book recounts how young people make sense of unwanted sexual attention within a culturally complex, alcohol-fuelled, and sexually-charged environment. A thorough and thought-provoking text, this book will be of particular interest to scholars of criminology, sociology, and political science.