READING LIST
Prevention:
Trauma-Proofing Your Kids: A Parents' Guide for Instilling Confidence, Joy and Resilience
By: Peter A. Levine
The number of anxious, depressed, hyperactive and withdrawn children is staggering—and still growing! Millions have experienced bullying, violence (real or in the media), abuse or sexual molestation. Many other kids have been traumatized from more “ordinary” ordeals such as terrifying medical procedures, accidents, loss and divorce. Trauma-Proofing Your Kids sends a lifeline to parents who wonder how they can help their worried and troubled children now. It offers simple but powerful tools to keep children safe from danger and to help them “bounce back” after feeling scared and overwhelmed. No longer will kids have to be passive prey to predators or the innocent victims of life’s circumstances.
In addition to arming parents with priceless protective strategies, best-selling authors Dr. Peter A. Levine and Maggie Kline offer an antidote to trauma and a recipe for creating resilient kids no matter what misfortune has besieged them. Trauma-Proofing Your Kids is a treasure trove of simple-to-follow “stress-busting,” boundary-setting, sensory/motor-awareness activities that counteract trauma’s effect on a child’s body, mind and spirit. Including a chapter on how to navigate the inevitable difficulties that arise during the various ages and stages of development, this ground-breaking book simplifies an often mystifying and complex subject, empowering parents to raise truly confident and joyful kids despite stressful and turbulent times.
Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders: Who They Are, How They Operate, and How We Can Protect Ourselves and Our Children
By: Anna C. Salter, Ph. D.
From Publishers Weekly:
Salter, known for such novels as White Lies, offers a direct and startling look at the alarming problem of sexual predators in the U.S. Drawing on her experience counseling victims and offenders, she creates a daunting picture for the readers. "This is not a book with complete and comfortable answers. It will not finish with a checklist for identifying a sex offender.... But if I do my job right, reading this book will make it harder for sex offenders to get access to you or your children," she says in her introduction. Despite some much publicized media cases, Salter believes there are many misunderstandings about sexual predators. Most of the crimes are premeditated and carefully planned, and fewer than 5% of sexual predators are caught. With anecdotes and case histories, Salter examines such various predators as rapists and child molesters. Then, she goes on to offer some specific strategies to avoid high-risk situations. These tactics consist of monitoring children, even teens, on the Internet; carrying a cell phone; using home security systems, etc. The descriptions of violent attacks and victims' experience will undoubtedly unnerve readers. However, the subject matter is likely to appeal more to police or psychology professionals. The strategies the author offers for readers are usually fairly obvious. While sexual crimes may be on the increase, readers may see this book as necessary only after they've been victimized rather than as a preventive guide.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Predators and Child Molesters: What Every Parent Needs to Know to Keep Kids Safe
By: Robin Sax
There is no crime not even murder that worries and sickens parents more than child sexual abuse. Parents wonder how to protect their children when almost every day the news reports another incident of someone in authority arrested on suspicion of child abuse from clergy and teachers to family members themselves. Even law enforcement has had trouble defining the problem and only recently has the Department of Justice begun recording statistics of sexual assault against children. Amid the confusion generated by sensational news reports and uncertainty regarding the nature and extent of child sexual abuse, what can parents do?
In this straightforward, clearly written guidebook, veteran sex-crimes prosecutor and Los Angeles deputy district attorney Robin Sax answers one hundred questions that she has most often encountered in her fifteen years of experience. From the definition of abuse to the profiles of a predator to how to report an incident and to whom, Sax provides practical, reassuring, and appropriate information.
Predators and Child Molesters by Robin Sax is the first book to be awarded Amber Alert Book of the Year Award.
For Children and Parents Who Are Victims:
When Your Child Has Been Molested: A Parents' Guide to Healing and Recovery
By: Kathryn Brohl and Joyce Case Potter
This is the thoroughly revised and updated edition of the best-selling guide for families of children who have been molested. First published in 1988, this new edition includes current research and information on the nature and effects of molestation on boys and girls, as well as proven techniques for therapy, healing, and recovery. Using everyday language, the authors provide information, comfort, and advice on how to put the pieces back together again after a child has been sexually molested.
It Won't Hurt Forever: Guiding Your Child Through Trauma
By: Peter A. Levine
After a painful or fearful experience, children may endure such symptoms as unexplainable stomachaches, pains, nightmares, bedwetting, nervousness, aggression, distractibility, and other problems. On It Won’t Hurt Forever, Dr. Peter Levine offers his 35 years of expertise in healing emotional trauma to show you a breakthrough approach for helping your child. Created especially for parents and caregivers, here are the skills you need to help a child recover from frightening events in a healthier, more natural way – using the body’s own healing mechanisms.
Waking the Tiger: Healing Trauma - The Innate Capacity to Transform Overwhelming Experiences
By: Peter A. Levine
In an age of Prozac and victimhood, we are not encouraged to take control of our behavioural ailments. This book, based on the authors' years of work with stress and trauma victims, aims to pass control back to the individual and away from the treatment centre. It challenges the myth that trauma stays with you for the rest of your life, and presents powerful exercises to reconcile traumatic experiences with "normal" life. By understanding the source of trauma - whether it be by violence, loss, or natural disaster - you can pick up the psychological and physical tools to resolve and complete a natural traumatic reaction.
Trauma Through a Child's Eyes: Awakening the Ordinary Miracle of Healing
By: Peter A. Levine and Maggie Kline
An essential guide for recognizing, preventing, and healing childhood trauma, from infancy through adolescence--what parents, educators, and health professionals can do.
Trauma can result not only from catastrophic events such as abuse, violence, or loss of loved ones, but from natural disasters and everyday incidents such as auto accidents, medical procedures, divorce, or even falling off a bicycle. At the core of this book is the understanding of how trauma is imprinted on the body, brain, and spirit, resulting in anxiety, nightmares, depression, physical illnesses, addictions, hyperactivity, and aggression. Rich with case studies and hands-on activities, Trauma Through A Child's Eyes gives insight into children's innate ability to rebound with the appropriate support, and provides their caregivers with tools to overcome and prevent trauma.
For Survivors:
The Wounded Heart: Hope for Adult Victims of Childhood Sexual Abuse
By: Dan B. Allender, Ph. D.
Studies indicate that at least one in three women have been sexually abused as a child. Fixed on biblical foundations, Dr. Dan Allender shows that there is hope and healing when survivors call on the Great Physician for relief from their suffering.
Now repackaged, but with the same life-giving insights, survivors and their loved ones will find professional skill and spiritual direction to learn that they can heal from the trauma of abuse.
The Courage to Heal Workbook: A Guide for Women and Men Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
By: Laura Davis
In this groundbreaking companion to The Courage to Heal, Laura Davis offers an inspiring, in-depth workbook that speaks to all women and men healing from the effects of child sexual abuse. The combination of checklists, writing and art Projects, open-ended questions and activities expertly guides the survivor through the healing process.
Survival Skills: Teaches survivors to create a safe, supportive environment, ask for help, deal with crisis periods, and choose therapy. Aspects Of Healing: Focuses on the healing process: gaining a capacity for hope, breaking silence, letting go of shame, turning anger into action, planning a confrontation, preparing for family contact, and affirming personal progress. Guidelines For Healing Sexually: Redefines the concept of "safe sex" and establishes healthy ground rules for sexual contact.
Healing the Sexually Abused Heart: A Workbook for Survivors, Thrivers, and Supporters
By: Jaime Romo, Ph. D.
39 million people in the United States have experienced sexual abuse in some form. Sadly, most victims live among us with near-invisibility. “Healing the Sexually Abused Heart: A Workbook for Survivors, Thrivers, and Supporters” is a valuable resource for victims of sexual abuse, their support groups, and others impacted by abuse and neglect. Practical, inspirational and hopeful, this book will literally help save lives. Victor Veith, executive director of the National Association to Prevent Sexual Abuse of Children shares, “In eloquent, understandable prose, Dr. Romo offers a helping hand to the millions impacted by the sin of child sexual abuse.” This workbook offers insightful personal testimony coupled with practical exercises. Mental health professionals, survivors of sexual abuse, those who feel betrayed by authorities, spiritual guides, or anyone who wishes to help end sexual abuse will find the exercises and insights, here, key in helping victims recover from sexual abuse.
Transforming Trauma: A Guide to Understanding and Treating Adult Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse
By: Anna C. Salter
Practitioners helping adult survivors of child sexual abuse need to be aware of the thought processes of offenders. The premise of Anna Salter's major book is that those who do not recognize an internalized perpetrator when they hear one will often be frustrated by the tenacity of the survivor's self blame.
Primarily oriented towards treating adult survivors, this invaluable book will also be useful for treating sex offenders. It includes discussion of crucial issues such as: what clinicians who treat survivors need to know about sex offenders; the different ways sadistic and nonsadistic offenders think and the resulting different `footprints' they leave in the heads of survivors; how trauma affects survivors' world-views; whether apology sessions re-abuse survivors; and what is effective, and why telling a client that `it's not your fault' is ineffective, in combating an internalized perpetrator. Finally, Salter describes the steps of therapy for survivors and proposes that trauma can be transformed rather than just endured.
`This book gets into the mind of sexual offenders; it's a kind of Know Your Enemy strategy which can arm victims and protectors with sufficient ammunition for future protection and techniques for healing based on a thorough literature//research review where the aetiology of sexual assault is critically appraised in order to provide a detailed road map for treatment. This is a unique and fascinating book, beautifully written, with illustrative metaphors, where Anna Salter crosses the bridge between the survivor's experience and the perpetrator's psychology... [it] illuminates the therapeutic journey and will hopefully contribute to liberation and transforming of trauma. It's all here: the duet of predator and prey, the False Memory Syndrome debate, a revisiting of the applicability of PTSD as a sequelae of sexual abuse, and exploration of perpetrator apology and whether it can be an excuse to reabuse... This book is powerful and empowering. Read it' - British Psychological Society Psychology of Women Section Newsletter
For Supporters of Survivors:
Allies in Healing: When the Person You Love Was Sexually Abused as a Child
By: Laura Davis
"Partners can now feel supported and guided in their quest for healing--for themselves and for those they love and cherish." -Dan Sexton, Childhelp, U.S.A
Other:
The Slave Next Door: Human Trafficking and Slavery in America Today
By: Kevin Bales
From Publishers Weekly:
Although most people imagine widespread enslavement only in the historical past, human trafficking continues to exist today in myriad forms around the world. In this informative call to action, Bales (Disposable People), sociologist and president of Free the Slaves, and Soodalter (Hanging Captain Gordon), a historian, document routine coercive slave labor in domestic service, prostitution, farm labor, factories, light industry, prisons and mining operations. While many sensational cases have been well publicized, the authors demonstrate that slavery exists in mundane and unexpected forms. Their case studies begin in an American suburb and traverse the globe to urban China and rural Ghana, returning to Los Angeles, Calif., and East Orange, N.J., just a few of 100-plus documented cases in the U.S. The second half of the book focuses on causes and solutions, with a helpful emphasis on how ordinary individuals can recognize and report coercive situations, creating a humane and helpful primer on how to sever the links that create and hide human bondage. (July)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
The Sacred Bath: An American Teen's Story of Modern Day Slavery
By: Theresa Flores
Author Theresa Flores shares her story of trafficking and slavery while living in an upper-middle class suburb of Detroit Michigan. At fifteen years of age, she was drugged, raped and tortured for two long years. Kept in bondage, forced to pay back an impossible debt. All the while living at home, attempting to keep family safe and attending school during the day along side of her abusers. Only to be called into ‘service’, late each night, while her unknowing family slept. Involuntarily involved in a large underground criminal ring, Ms. Flores endured more as a child than most adults will ever face their entire lives.
In The Sacred Bath, Ms. Flores discusses how she healed the wounds of sexual servitude and offers advice to parents and professionals on preventing this from occurring. She also educates and gives facts on human trafficking in modern day American.