2014 Reading: I Know My First Name Is Steven

Ever since reading A Child Called 'It' and the other books about childhood abduction/abuse, I had been on the lookout for other books on the subject that peeked my interest. I saw this book as a possibility and went through a pretty rough ordeal to get it in the first place. No where around here had it, none of the library systems I troll around had a copy, and I finally had to resort to looking in far-away systems to see if ANYONE had it in the whole state. My first request for the interlibrary loan was denied (no reason given), but I tried again and finally got a copy from... somewhere. I have no idea.

I took my time reading the book because I knew that I wasn't going to be able to just skim through it. (And it totally wasn't because I've been lazy or anything like that, nope...)

It really makes you think about your own mind when you hear about something like this happening. If you were suddenly pulled from the street when you were 7, told that your parents could no longer take care of you so they gave you to someone that you've never seen before in your life, and then for the next 7 year this new "parental figure" sexually molests you repeatedly (along with your school friends)... what do you think you would be like at the end of all of that?

In some ways, he began to trust the old man. He confessed, after everything had come to an end, that he was thankful that the man had taken care of him...

I just...

I don't really know how one responds to something like that. And then, it being the 70's-80's, the parents thought that he didn't need any profession (read: psychological) help! You don't come out of something like that without having SOMETHING to discuss with a doctor. It may have been a sore subject that he would just as soon forget, but everyone should know that you CAN'T keep something like that in the back of your mind for long before it bursts out in some form or another (as it did with his drug use and tragic death in a car crash) that can be more harmful than the thing itself from which the person is trying to hide.

OH! AND THEN, to put one last candle on this marvelous cake of happiness, the boy's older brother (speculatively, because he was jealous of all the attention the brother was getting when he was finally returned home) became a serial killer.

One. Big. Happy. Family.