KERI 1: The Original Child Abuse True Story (Child Abuse True Stories) Kindle Edition

It is impossible to imagine more evil parents than this! The incidents described were so horrible---sexual and verbal abuse, beatings, manipulation and deceit--there were times I could scarcely absorb the details. How does a child survive this? I do not know. Indeed, Keri's story is among the saddest and most tragic I have ever read. I am happy for Keri's brighter moments, which she found in her nana and extended family, her sympathetic neighbours, and the teachers at her convent school. I especially appreciated that while the author conveyed her scepticism about God, she was fair in her analysis of the religious instructors, and of women like Mam, who sought to help her. Bitterness, somehow, did not blind her soul to goodness, as well it might for a child so unloved and miserably treated. This is Book 1 of an amazing story I'll never forget. It's not for the faint of heart, with its shocking details and bad language; but, in this case, in my opinion, well worth the effort given the circumstances. This is a brutally honest retelling, not a sanitized one. Keri, you are an adult now. Thank you for your courage to survive against the odds, and to live above and beyond the darkness. Thank you for sharing your story with us. I pray you have found peace as you so richly deserve. May the Help of the helpless go with you now and always.

I think your mother is a sick woman and used you to get attention by muchowsine by proxy (spelling?) i believe everything you have written and i imagine there is alot u didnt write. i am getting ready to start your second book and i know, i hope and believe, that you broke that viscious cycle your mother started. and no one helped you and your step father is a bastard pig. your mother had to know and i hope that she dies a slow painful death. i imagine she is still not happy in her life. yuor nana really disappointed me and for you that must of been defeating. i took the book on vacation and found myself feeling your pain and tears cried for you. your mother resented you bc ur father left her and then her dad disowned her so of courese she will blame you. she should of gave you up for adoption or ha nana raise you. why she kept you to torture you in beyond belief. i am sorry you had no help from anyone. the social workers police the house for girls with those perverts as well. thats rampany everywhere and of course ur trouble so who will they believe. but i imagine in some way karma got to every persson that wronged you is some way. the world is cosmic like that and no matter when or where or how their time for pain will come, hopefully agin and again. thank the lord for people like sylvia and mam, who tried to help you as best the could. and russell grew up only knowing what your demented mother and disgusting step father told him. you mother is a disgrace to all mothers and women. i hope she reads some of these. i believe every word you wrote and not for attention but for you to heal and let the world know of the evil against children can be right in front of your face. i recomment the movie oranges and sunshine bc during the 1960 1970 and 1980 children from poor families, single parents, troubled kids, adoption, etc were sent to australia on a boat. britian didnt want them and the children thought they were going to a better place and maybe a home. NOT they were sent there as sex slaves cleaning slaves. as soon as the got off the boat they were stripped of all their belongings. brothers and sisters seperated. the parents of these children when they were able to get them back was told by the government that they had been adopted and they told the children who asked that their parents had died or didnt want them. they just shipped them over there to be done with the care$$ for them. their names got changed they didnt know who they were. the social worker in this movie is astounding as she investigates the life of the children. the boys were sent to build a church for the pedophile priest that is still standing to this day. at the end of the story tony blair acknowledges this gross "pact" with australia. who would believe in the 1980's this was still happening and the government covered it up kept it secret. australia did not pay or help these children they accepted them as slaves for their people. so yes keri i believe everything in your first book and in the second as well before i even read it. look at the world today....look into the childrens eyes...... thank you for sharing your life with us readers. my blood still boils for everyone who hurt you especially your mother mayy she be sent to purgatory not hell and i am not even a very religious person let her suffer for eternity and all the others as well but her that gross woman to even be called a woman suffer suffer suffer.

I dont know what made me pick this book, and then I immediately had to read the next book, and I was all ready to read the 3rd book but it's not even out yet! This book really affected me emotionally. I truly felt depressed while reading it, that's how much a part of her life you feel while reading this. Sadly, there really is lots of scum out in the world, and this poor girl really got her share. I could really relate to some of her issues, even those I did not share growing up. I foud her to be brutally honest, and believable. It's a true shame that not one person helped her out of the awful family she was dealt. I am disgusted with all of those who chose to turn their backs on her. Even the few that believed or witnessed the abuse and neglect did nothing to help her. I would LOVE to get my hands on her mother, just give me 5 minutes alone with her...

The book Keri: The SHOCKING True Story of a Child Abused is a sad and awful memoir of the horrible abuse endured by one young lady from birth to age 14. The author, the eponymous Keri, lived with an awfully abusive mother until the age of about 4 or 5, at which time the mother married an equally loathsome step-father. Shortly thereafter, a brother joined the family. Sadly, even he began to treat her with disdain as he grew older.This story is graphic and sickening in its detail. It has the unmistakable ring of truth in every recorded memory. It is perhaps most difficult of all to think of her as a child of 3 or 4 years old, not understanding the vitriol that spews from her mother's mouth; yearning for the simplest explanations yet denied them. In many ways, she was hopelessly naive, but most appalingly was repeatedly let down by the professionals who should have supported her.I hope, in the approximately 30-40 years since Keri's childhood, we have come far in our understanding of abuse and abused children. I can only pray that another child has to endure what Keri had to endure. The sad truth, though, is that as adults we are prone to believe other adults and attribute the words of a child to exaggeration or lying. What child would know of the things she went through, unless they had been done to her?I knocked off one star because of editing issues. At several places in the book, the names of people involved suddenly change. Additionally, the style of writing is very matter-of-fact and brusque. It makes me wonder how much all of this effects her even today.Highly recommended for adults (18+). Contains many instances of quoted strong language and graphic though not salacious details of repeated rape and sexual assault.Be prepared for many tears.

The pain from daily bashings and suffering this beautiful child had to endure from her lying scheming mother, the constant sexual harassment and rape from her step father and doctors from the medical fraternity who were blatantly so dumb that they didn’t use commonsense, with the treatment that Keri received at home everyday. Children don’t know how to tell lies, adults do. I hope as Keri got older that she found some justice in sending her mother and stepfather to prison.

I have to admit I started reading this book with some trepidation. As a person who also suffered all 3 of the types of abuse ( mental, physical & Sexual) as a child, I was not sure I wanted any memories re-awakened! However although there were many incidences and similarities I could identify with, Keri's story was different to my own. Keri truly had a horrific childhood, whether or not all is true or not ( I do believe her)..For a child to suffer her mothers hate (which I did too) is something a child should never suffer. Parents are there to guide us, protect us, and more than anything love us. I await her next book and hope she has at last found found happiness in her life as I have done. a Husband and Children with who to break the cycle of abuse.Some people will find reading this book hard to read, and in parts it is harrowing, Keri had the love of her grandmother, which partly helped her, and the love and support of the Romany Gypsies (of which I myself am descended) another coincidence, and I know 1st hand how the very people who are meant to trusted to protect us are the very people who can hide themselves.This is an excellent book, if only to continually get the message across that this does happen, and is still happening. Somewhere out there is another kerri, another me..I am roughly the same age as Kerri. At the time of our teens it was NOT either known or accepted that abuse on this scale went on. Thank goodness it is now known that it does and it is not so easy to hide. Mobile phones, the internet make it easier than ever for abuse to happen BUT they are also the same tools to help those suffering to escape it. Childline also has enabled kids to have a lifeline and a voice, A WARNING to readers who like me are Animal lovers this book contains graphic Animal cruelty that had me crying in bucket loads as much as for Kerri's suffering herself. A must read and I to read her follow up book as soon as it is released.

This is the first part of Kat Ward's harrowing true story. For those of you who aren't aware Kat Ward is the courageous woman who initiated the disclosure of the Jimmy Savile child sex abuse scandal after appearing on a TV documentary with others about the incidents.Beginning with her earliest upsetting memories at the age of three, Keri is severely abused both physically and psychologically by a mother who never wanted her and who told her she was wicked. From the outset, we are there with the vulnerable little child as she is subjected to a catalogue of horrific abuse, simply for being sick, wetting herself or having a fear of water. Keri's situation worsens when her mother moves in with `that man' Terry (later to become her stepfather) who is soon inflicting punishment on her and treating her in the same brutal and abusive way as her mother. Physical abuse soon turns to sexual abuse when Keri is not yet five years old.However, there are positive people in Keri's life, especially her Nana, who teaches her to read and allows her free rein to be creative. Nana is kind and loving and Keri is heartbroken whenever she has to return home to her mother's and stepfather's. In a way, Keri would have had a very different childhood if she'd been allowed to live with her Nana. She also gets comfort through the family pets: the dog, the cats and Lambie - the lamb knitted for her by her Nana, always never far away to give her comfort during the most gruesome of times.At primary school things are not much better for Keri, where she is bullied for being different - she has bad eczema - and when she does make a friend her mother soon puts a stop to it. In fact, like all bullies and manipulators, her mother needs to keep Keri as unpopular and friendless as possible to maintain her power over her. Once again, when Keri has a new baby brother, the difference in the way he is treated, compared to the way she is treated, is stark. Not only this, but Keri is scapegoated by her mother and stepfather so that her brother grows up thinking that Keri is treated differently and punished because she is `bad' rather than because their parents are abusive. This is another way in which the appalling abuse is maintained because Keri is portrayed as `the liar' and `the aggressive baddie' rather than her mother. Time and again, it is her mother who is believed and not Keri. It is the same when Keri confides to a teacher and is referred to Child Guidance. By this time, Keri has already been branded a `bad child' and `a problem child' - her own wayward temperament seen as the cause of the problem and her `poor parents' as the `victims' rather than vice versa. Thus Keri is the one who's accused of attacking her younger brother, the one who `screams insults' at her `poor mother' and the one accused of making `inappropriate sexual advances' to her stepfather when in reality she is being raped by him and subjected to all manner of abuse.All Keri wanted was to be believed but she was badly let down by the system and the prevailing attitude of the day and appalling attitudes, for example, by the terribly patronising Child Psychiatrist. It was easier for the professionals to believe that Keri must be lying and bad, rather than accept the reality of her situation. Of course, the manipulation of the authorities by her mother did nothing to help Keri.For younger people who may be shocked and stunned by such attitudes, in the 1960s and 70s when Keri was growing up, children were routinely slapped, spanked, slippered at home and school, and at school, boys were also caned in the classroom (maybe some girls still were too). But Keri was subjected to punishment far beyond even what was considered `acceptable' or `appropriate' at the time. Regarding the horrific sexual abuse Keri suffered, this was also a time when this just wasn't talked about: there was no ChildLine, and rape and child abuse hadn't been widely exposed for the atrocities they were.However, although the appalling catalogue of violence and abuse can sometimes seem relentless, the book is powerfully written and acutely observed and the autobiography is interspersed with many more positive or hopeful interludes, for instance Keri's time at boarding school. We see a strong, resilient spirit that refuses to be broken, a feisty temperament that refuses to be cowed. Encouraged by her Nana and later some of the nuns, teachers and friends at the Catholic boarding school she attends when a little older, her love is learning and her questioning nature is fostered and she starts to blossom. At boarding school, away from her family, she gets a different perspective on the world and the family dynamics start to change when she returns home in the holidays, particularly her relationship with her brother, and without Keri to scapegoat, her mother and stepfather turn on each other until their relationship deteriorates. Observing their relationship through Keri's eyes we start to see her mother as a pathetic, weak figure, and very rarely we get glimpses of a woman who is almost human, for instance when she shows solidarity with Keri over her spider phobia.As Keri reaches adolescence she reaches out and makes some trusted and supportive relationships in the new neighbourhood, and we start to feel the tide turning.It is impossible not to root for Keri. On finishing this first part, I immediately wanted to read what happens next in Keri's extraordinary life, especially as part two is called: Keri: Fighting Back'. On my to-be-read list for sure.

What a sad story social services schools even next of kin should be made accountable . I hope that Keri finds peace in her life

I have never read a book like this before. I had no idea it existed, and had never heard of Kat Ward before. But Amazon had sent me an e-mail of a selection of cut price books that I might want to consider loading onto my Kindle and although most of them did not interest me, KERI 1 did. From the write up about it, I could tell it was something that I should read and so I bought it and downloaded it onto my Kindle.Almost right from page 1, I struggled to believe just what I was reading. This poor girl, regularly thrashed black and blue by her mother and stepfather, as well as the pain she experienced when her stepfather raped her young body, or used his fingers to roughly move about inside her - something that made me feel quite sick - and the lies told by her mother to stop anyone finding the truth, absolutely horrified me and at times I had to stop reading it as the description s of the abuse were too upsetting.How I wished I could have given Keri a big hug and tell her that most men aren't like her stepfather and that it was dreadful that her mother twisted the thoughts of the professional consultants who Keri saw, so that they had immediately decided that anything Keri told them was a lie and she must not be believed.This book finished when Keri was 14 years-old. I see that there are 5 or 6 more books in this series and know that I am going to have to purchase KERI 2 straight away, in the hope that I read her mother and stepfather are both found out and jailed - for a very long time.An amazing book, but best read with a box of tissues close at hand.