That morning, Michelle presented her Psychology honours thesis on men's perceptions of rape. She started her presentation like this, “A woman born in South Africa has a greater chance of being raped than learning how to read …” On that same evening, she goes to a party to celebrate attaining her degree. She and a friend go to the beach; the friend has something she wants to discuss. They are both robbed, assaulted and raped. Within minutes of getting help, Michelle realises she'll never be herself again. She's now "the girl who was raped."

This book is Michelle's fight to be herself again. Of the taint she feels, despite the support and resources at her disposal as the loved child of a successful middle-class family. Of the fall-out to friendships, job, identity.

It's Michelle's brave way of standing up for the women in South Africa who are raped every day.

Emma van der Walt is ’n pastor, ’n ma en eggenoot, en ’n vrou met ’n hart vir God. Sy is ook die vreeslose stigter van die niewinsgewende organisasie, Brave to love.

Daagliks betree hulle die donker wêreld van die seksbedryf en mensehandel om jong vroue uit die kloue van euwel te red. Hierdie meisies word dan met liefde en leiding ’n nuwe begin gebied.

Emma en haar span werk sy-aan-sy met plaaslike en internasionale wetgewende instansies. Saam beveg hulle mensehandel en slawerny en vlek die korrupsie en ontsaglike lyding wat agter toe deure plaasvind, oop.

Hierdie is haar storie en die skokkende verhale van die gelukkiges wat gered kon word om die hel van mensehandel te oorleef.

Emma van der Walt is a pastor, mother and wife, and woman of God. She is also the fearless founder of the nonprofit organisation, Brave to Love. They tackle the dark world of sex trade and human trafficking head on to rescue young women from the clutches of evil. These girls are then lovingly cared for and guided as they embark on their new beginnings.

Emma and her team work side by side with local and international law enforcement agencies. Together they combat human trafficking and slavery to uncover the corruption and immense suffering that goes on behind closed doors.

This is her story and the shocking tales of the lucky ones who survive to escape the hell of human trafficking.

In November 2019, Deon Wiggett’s sensational weekly podcasts held South Africa in thrall as he hunted down the paedophile who raped him as a schoolboy. Now, in My Only Story, he completes his exposé of Willem Breytenbach, the once brilliant teacher and later media luminary who led a predatory life.

Deon’s mission to expose his abuser takes him from Breytenbach’s high-school years at an agricultural school in South Africa’s hinterland to the famous Grey College in Bloemfontein and the media titan Naspers. But his quest reveals so much more. As he traces systemic failures through schools great and small, he uncovers a culture of complicity that poses a clear and present danger to the country’s children. While investigating men who prey on boys and girls, Deon devises a model that anyone can use to identify paedophiles in their midst. In his own words: ‘It’s pleasant to pretend that men don’t rape children, but once you accept that they do, it becomes surprisingly easy to recognise their trickery. Once you match a universal pattern to a specific man’s profile, you can spot the deceit before it is too late.’

My Only Story is a riveting, thoughtful and often irreverent account of one man’s determination to overcome childhood trauma; to help others face their demons; and to extract some beauty from the boyhood he lost.

An astonishingly brave and moving book from Caroline Darian, daughter of infamous Dominique Pelicot, detailing how her mother rebuilt her life as the world follows a trial that will go down in history.

The trial of Dominique Pelicot, which began on 2 September 2024, has captured the world's attention. Behind the haunting details of Pelicot's unthinkable crimes are a mother and daughter who were forced to rebuild their lives. This is their story.

In November 2020, Caroline Darian received a call from the police in Carpentras. Her father was in police custody. The seizure of his computer equipment revealed the unthinkable: since 2013, he had drugged his wife before handing her over, in a state of unconsciousness, to men, from all ages and stages of life.

With exceptional courage, Darian recounts the earth-shattering discovery that a loved one, her own father, is capable of the worst. But more importantly, she shares the remarkable story of her mother Gisèle and how she carried on living, without self-pity, while learning to manage all of the things her husband once took care of. She shares how her mother managed to maintain her joie de vivre in circumstances none of us could imagine.

Gisèle has won acclaim around the world after she gave up her right to anonymity and opted for a public trial, a trial in which Caroline herself has testified, turning the tables: the shame no longer borne by the victims in silence but directed, at last, to the abusers. Together, mother and daughter reveal another side to the violence committed against women, as they bravely transform their private trauma into a collective fight.

In the spirit of Amy Poehler’s Yes Please, Lena Dunham’s Not That Kind of Girl, and Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist, a powerful collection of essays about gender, sexuality, race, beauty, Hollywood, and what it means to be a modern woman.

One month before the release of the highly anticipated film The Birth of a Nation, actress Gabrielle Union shook the world with a vulnerable and impassioned editorial in which she urged our society to have compassion for victims of sexual violence. In the wake of rape allegations made against director and actor Nate Parker, Union—a forty-four-year-old actress who launched her career with roles in iconic ’90s movies—instantly became the insightful, outspoken actress that Hollywood has been desperately awaiting. With honesty and heartbreaking wisdom, she revealed her own trauma as a victim of sexual assault: "It is for you that I am speaking. This is real. We are real."

In this moving collection of thought provoking essays infused with her unique wisdom and deep humor, Union uses that same fearlessness to tell astonishingly personal and true stories about power, color, gender, feminism, and fame. Union tackles a range of experiences, including bullying, beauty standards, and competition between women in Hollywood, growing up in white California suburbia and then spending summers with her black relatives in Nebraska, coping with crushes, puberty, and the divorce of her parents. Genuine and perceptive, Union bravely lays herself bare, uncovering a complex and courageous life of self-doubt and self-discovery with incredible poise and brutal honesty. Throughout, she compels us to be ethical and empathetic, and reminds us of the importance of confidence, self-awareness, and the power of sharing truth, laughter, and support.

Sixteen-year-old Engela flees to Bloemfontein because the leader of the Satanic Group 13 wishes to kill her. Her path crosses with Pieter, a friend of her brother’s, who turns her over to the owner of a brothel in return for money he owes him.

After a desperate and impoverished childhood Engela, as a rebellious teenager, becomes mixed up with Satanism, alcohol and drugs and is eventually kept as a sex slave. Her only wish is to escape, but how? Every night the club’s doors are shuttered. Her final shot at freedom is the young student Jacques who works in the club’s reception area. But then he also disappears from the scene following a mysterious accident in the Drakensberg . . .

In the second part of the book Elanie shares with the reader her awful experiences. She relates how she learned to cope with her feelings of despair, loneliness, pain and humiliation from a Christian perspective. She reaches out to other former victims of sex trafficking and encourages them to open their hearts in order to achieve emotional healing. She talks about the power of forgiveness and acceptance, and also offers essential practical advice for parents and their children.

Why...

I know, why would anybody name their first book, Why? Let me quickly tell you.

Exposure to pornography at a very young age and sexual abuse as a child, made my life hell. Quite frankly it ruined my whole life. I lived with daily battles that created a war within my soul. This torment lasted until I was 40 years old. I could no longer live with the trauma, the pain and suffering, emanating from my childhood events, I needed help. Just like many adults and children do too.

Don’t we all have a story? Some stories are more attractive than others. This is my story. It is real, authentic, and raw. So many ask the question, Why? Not all our why’s have clear answers. And often, we never get an answer.

Why adults stay stuck in early childhood trauma?
Why pornography will ruin your child’s life?
Why do children need early intervention from trauma?
Why are parents blind to see the warning signs from trauma?
Why is a safe environment so important for a child to develop?
Why can the trauma of sexual abuse last a lifetime?
Why does Jesus care?

Many of your why’s will be answered through reading my life story mirrored with those of the Israelites. A story that is used multiple times in history to display Slavery and Freedom. It is a story that would help people to find true freedom, a story that will point you to the Truth. It is a story of wandering through the wilderness as a slave, with addictions, pain, and suffering. Addictions that are not easily spoken about, addictions that is not easily resolved. Addictions that many survivors don't want to have in the first place.

Freedom that I so desperately longed for. Freedom I found. Freedom that can be yours too.

Rose West was, on the face of it, a mother living with her family in a semi in Gloucester. But behind closed doors, she was a monstrous killer who, with husband Fred, killed at least a dozen women and girls, including her own daughter Heather, sixteen, and stepdaughter, Charmaine, eight.

Rose was sadistic as both a mother and killer, and all her victims as well as her own children were subjected to horrific sexual violence and torture. Rose did paid sex work in the family home with husband Fred peeping through the holes he had made in the wall and listening on an intercom. They modified the house to take in lodgers and then preyed on them, as well as other young women hitching a lift or waiting for a bus.

In 1972, aged seventeen, Caroline Owens, who had been hired as a nanny, was drugged, attacked and raped, but managed to escape. But she could not bring herself to testify, so the Wests remained free.

Two decades would pass before Rose’s dark secrets were discovered when nine of the victims’ bodies were dug up in the garden and beneath the cellar at the West’s home at 25 Cromwell Street. And now, three decades after this grim discovery, the workings of Rose West’s twisted mind remain as mysterious as who played what role in this husband-and-wife folie à deux.

Gender based violence is widely prevalent in South African society, but male rape is often a neglected area. According to The Conversation, in an article by Prof Louise Du Toit, men make up around 10% of victims of sexual violence.

The group South African Male Survivors of Sexual Abuse says one in six adult males in the country have been victims of sexual offences in their lifetimes and, in 2012, almost 20% of all sexual abuse victims were male. But men are up to 10 times less likely than women to report sexual violence against them. Frequently men who report sexual assault are accused of being gay. In addition, according to Prof Du Toit, “Some feminist activists are reluctant to focus on the male victims because they think it will undermine long-fought-for attention for female victims.”

Silent Scream is a refreshing acknowledgement of this disturbing picture, told firsthand by a survivor of multiple instances of sexual violence, including gang rape and other forms of physical and sexual violence.

The author is a man in his fifties, intelligent and multifaceted, who carried the weight of the ages on his tattooed shoulders. Following a childhood marred by distant parents, he was assaulted in his late teens.

This is a book filled with hurt, with anger, with events that should never occur, but that the author has been able to rise above. It’s also a book about recovery, redemption, and the power of healing. No punches are pulled. It’s a very necessary book for our country and our time.

Female Fear Factory is the much-anticipated follow up to the 2016 Sunday Times Alan Paton Award winner Rape: A South African Nightmare.

Where Rape: A South African Nightmare introduced strategies for disrupting rape culture at an individual level, Female Fear Factory offers an even bolder vision for collective action against all cultures of sexual violence.

Like the previous book on which it builds, Female Fear Factory fuses intellectual rigour and extensive research, written by one of South Africa's keenest minds, award-winning Professor Pumla Dineo Gqola.

This book examines sexual contact and abuse from a purely scientific and medical perspective.

The book covers:

• the recently updated and relevant legislation
• the sexual biology (anatomy and physiology) of the body, especially related to understanding medical aspects of injury and sexual contact, how and when injuries are caused, and how these relate to findings and their consequences
• the critical aspects of medical forensic examinations including incident history, clinical examination technique, medical findings, evidence collection, special laboratory investigations and medical reports for court

The cadre of forensic nursing as a professional scope of nursing has recently been accepted by the Nursing Council and is now beginning to emerge, and legally in this country such nurses are now allowed to examine sexual abuse cases, issue reports and give testimony provided they undergo an accredited training programme in sexual abuse medicine. In addition, medical and legal professionals need to understand, interpret, and present sexual medical evidence appropriately in sexual offences cases.

This book will serve as a ready reference for the understanding and interpretation of the sexual biology and medicine, both in the medical practitioner’s consulting room and the courtroom.

Sex crime has become one of the most intense areas of public and political concern in recent decades. This book explores the complex influences that shape its construction in the press. Media representations give important clues as to how we should perceive the nature and extent of sex crime, how we should think and feel about it, how we should respond to it, and the measures that might be taken to reduce risk. Understanding the media construction of sex crime is central to understanding its meaning and place in our everyday lives. Unlike much of the existing research, this book explores the construction of sex crime at every stage of the news production process. It then locates the findings within a wider context of cultural, economic and political change in late modernity. The book; shows how increased market competition and tabloidisation has altered fundamentally the way in which news is produced, communicated and consumed discusses representations of the full range of sex crimes from consensual homosexual offences and prostitution to serial rape and sex murder draws upon extensive empirical research in Northern Ireland, while addressing issues relevant to advance capitalist societies across the globe

100 Women I Know is a collection of accounts of rape and sexual assault. The stories in this book are from women that the editor knows personally, but aims to bring together and foster solidarity between everyone who has been a victim of sexual violence. By exposing the common threads in each story, 100 Women I Know demonstrates the need to redefine rape within society and to further the understanding of consent to help prevent young men and women from becoming perpetrators or survivors of sexual violence. The book gives a voice to all of the brave women who shared their stories and continues the much needed conversation on sexual violence. Thirty percent of money received from book sales will go towards funding educational workshops in schools.

"Things Even Gonzalez Can't Fix" is the shockingly brilliant debut memoir of a 24-year-old Greek South African girl, Christy Chilimigras. It is nothing like "My Big Fat Greek Wedding". Although there are old women in black plucking stray hairs from their chins, the nuts in the baklava appear by way of a dash of crack cocaine, a sneaky brand of sexual abuse and cereal Tupperwares, packed to the brim with dagga. It is also very funny.

It is the story of a young girl growing up in Johannesburg in a space of pure chaos, raised by two addict parents. In reality Christy, otherwise known as Mouse, is raised by Tiger, her older sister. Their childhood is strange, made up of crack excursions to Hillbrow on second weekends at 3am, courtesy of their father, and a dope-smoking mother, Old Lass, who raises the two young girls single-handedly while starting her own business. Tiger and Mouse’s worlds are overturned when Old Lass proceeds to marry an alcoholic control freak under an unsuspecting tree, only to get arrested following an invasion by the Hawks.

“Children of addicts are curious things. We are deathly serious. We tinker on the edge of the worst case scenario. We are manic in our joy. We mean to dip our toes, but rather dive head first into extremes. We despise drugs … and people who do drugs. So what then does it say about me when at 16 I fall desperately in love with a boy who perpetually has a joint dangling from his lips?”

"Things Even Gonzalez Can't Fix" is also a disturbingly brutal story about two sisters, raised by a father who has been sexualising them since they were toddlers.

“We are desperate for answers and the knowledge of where to place our discomfort. If it feels like abuse and hurts like abuse, but it doesn’t look like the abuse we read about in magazines, does it even count?”

At 16 Christy falls in love with Olive Oil, a dopehead addict, then, at 22, with a much older sado masochist, The Italian, who introduces her to a world of dangerously rough sex.

“The book is my attempt at reclaiming my sanity and sexuality, which was colonised a long time ago. It involved countless bowls of pasta, glasses of wine (which best you believe I overthought) and a compulsion to be honest; very honest. Like oh sweet Jesus it hurts to spill your guts. It hurts to be this honest.”

A book that simply pulsates with edgy originality, that unleashes a Millennial’s unapologetic perspective of our world, Christy Chilimigras is a new voice that demands to be read. Not since Kopano Matlwa’s "Coconut" has a book promised to shake perspectives and overturn the way we see things.

Bullying, harassment and other unacceptable workplace behaviors pose significant problems for organizations. This exploration of the issue notes that factors from within the organization may help determine who and why some individuals become targets and others become bullies. The authors explore different types of behaviors where managers and management, as well as employees, are the problem. Each chapter has anecdotes scattered throughout and contains a 'mini-case,' review questions, 'action' items, and two longer cases, all based on actual events. The authors present a unique framework (V-REEL (R)) to assist individuals and organizations in analyzing the organization's environment in an effort to eradicate the negative behavior forces that contribute to bad behavior. In addition, they have included a glossary of important terms, a bibliography of useful references, a survey that may be used to assess conditions in the organization, and a listing of organizations that provide information or assistance. These various pedagogical tools enable the book to be used by human resource professionals, managers, employees, and academics as individuals or in groups to both avoid and eradicate bullying and harassment at work.

Maria is a young woman raised as a Jehovah’s Witness in South Africa, and this book documents her experiences of gender victimisation, sexual abuse and cover-ups within the church, as well as her eventual ‘escape’ from its doctrines and control. Maria’s freedom came at a price, however – she can never see her mother and sister again.

A worldwide, Christian-based religious group that professes an unparalleled dedication to Jehovah (God), the Jehovah’s Witnesses have a strong sense of community and appear to embrace a disciplined yet loving way of life with the promise of eternal salvation for those who follow the way of Jehovah. It is a seemingly benign religious movement, claiming to be politically neutral, racially and ethnically transcendent, with a membership of eight million people worldwide. Yet, at its core, many former Witnesses claim that it is a fear-based doomsday cult that considers itself above all other belief systems.

Allegations of secular, cultish behaviour, homophobia, money laundering, brainwashing and countless accusations of institutionalised sexual abuse abound. It seems that membership is managed and retained mostly by way of information control and manipulation, extending to the shunning of higher education and preaching their own version of the Bible.

Entering the church is easy, but leaving it can be a matter of life or death, as Maria and countless others discovered...