Innocence Revisited - Dr Cathy Kezelman

. . . Cathy, a successful doctor, becomes too unwell to practice and is forced to face a reality that she had known for some time -- she had no memory of 10 years of her childhood. Cathy's intensely personal first work weaves a tale back and forth through time and space, capturing the confusion and despair of both the child and the adult as she searches for certainty in a world of shadows and falsehood. As her past catches up with her, she relives the terror and agony of her repeated rape and torture at the hands of a revered doctor friend of her family. Over time more horrific memories emerge, as do the different parts of Cathy's mind which had separated years earlier to shield the little girl from her ongoing trauma. Cathy's father who she loved had first sexually abused her at the age of four, and that abuse escalated during her childhood. For several years when Cathy was very young, her father had taken her to her grandmother's house, where a sadistic hooded cult had subjected her to incomprehensible acts of cruelty. Although, at times Cathy's story challenges one's faith in the nature of humanity it ultimately affirms the capacity of the human spirit to survive and flourish despite it all. It challenges the reader not only to believe, but to understand and to empathise -- for there but for the grace of God . . . The story ends with a quiet sense of hope as Cathy describes her recovery from those ten forgotten childhood years, her renewed relationships with her husband and children, and her enthusiasm for the next phase of her life. Both in her memoir and in her work Cathy works to 'chip' away at the ignorance, resistance and denial that foster the conditions in which child abuse flourishes.