While the Covid-19 pandemic has confined most of the world to some form of lockdown, it has also confronted us with the horrific truth about the pandemic of gender-based violence. This self-help book is for every person dealing with domestic violence and sexual abuse, not only in South Africa, but around the world.

We remember all the victims of abuse who have been silenced by death. Women and children are being raped, abused, stalked - and murdered - but are expected to keep quiet about this. We can no longer accept this as "normal". Statistics tell us that more than half of all murders worldwide are committed by partners. Husbands, wives or relational partners suffer the worst abuse.

These stories are told anonymously to protect their identities and their safety. They have shared their stories willingly, in their own words, from their perspective. And they have done so with love - hoping that sharing their stories will make a difference to yours.

May these stories inspire you to find your voice, face this onslaught with courage, and overcome it to live a free, healthy life.

Winner of the 2021 National Jewish Book Award for Con­tem­po­rary Jew­ish Life and Practice Finalist for the 2021 Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction. A startling and profound exploration of how Jewish history is exploited to comfort the living.

Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture―and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks―Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present.

Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life―trying to explain Shakespeare’s Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children’s school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study―to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past―making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.

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.

Within these pages James K. Beggan puts forward a novel approach to understanding sexual harassment by high value superstars in the workplace. The approach integrates ideas derived from evolutionary theory, utility theory, sexual scripting theory and research on the regulation of emotion. Besides providing a better understanding of the phenomenon, the book aims to contribute to the development of better techniques to prevent sexual harassment. Recently, credible allegations of sexual misconduct against high profile figures have dominated the news. Sexual harassment has become an important issue for leaders and those who study leadership. The author presents a new approach to understanding sexual harassment in the #MeToo era that integrates research from a diverse range of areas typically ignored by researchers. Ideas derived from this new approach are used to propose more effective methods for the elimination of sexual harassment in the workplace. The book also addresses how efforts to prevent sexual harassment may interfere with the free expression of sexuality and ultimately threaten the rights of the individual. Academics and journalists interested in understanding sexual harassment, including graduate students, and undergraduates enrolled in upper division specialized courses in gender relations will find this book to be innovative and informative.

A propulsive and moving memoir about a brother’s decades-long investigation into the circumstances surrounding his sister’s tragic death—and his own journey to forgiveness and closure.

On a summer evening in 1974, Jim Thomson arrived home from a baseball game to the news that his younger sister, Eileen, had taken her own life. To Jim, his parents, and his brother, Keith, the loss was unexpected and devastating. Only twenty-seven years old, Eileen had been living in California with her high school sweetheart, Vic, a cop, surrounded by a circle of close friends and working at a job she loved. It seemed unfathomable that she would kill herself, but as the family gathered in Pittsburgh to say goodbye, more details emerged that seemed to explain the tragedy: Eileen had confided in her parents that she had been suffering from depression, and her storybook marriage had been plagued by bitter fights, infidelity, and guilt. When Jim eventually sat down with his brother-in-law to talk about the final hours of Eileen’s life, Vic looked him in the eye and explained that he had stormed out of the room in the midst of a volatile argument. Moments later, a gunshot went off. Sensing no lies or evasion, Jim believed him. He recounted the story to the rest of the family, and they got on with their lives as best they could.

Twenty-seven years later, with all of his family passed away, Eileen’s death began to nag at Jim. Now a writer, he wanted to fill in the blanks of her story and answer the questions that were plaguing him. What had the final months of Eileen’s life been like? Why had she not told him about her troubles? How had the infidelity in her marriage brought her and Vic to that fateful day, and who else had been a part of it? What other demons had she been battling?

Determined to uncover the truth, Jim hired a private investigator to help him. Together, they tracked down Eileen’s old friends and clandestinely obtained copies of police reports, which revealed that Vic and Eileen’s relationship—and the sheriff’s investigation that followed her death—was much darker and more complicated than they had imagined. Torn by doubt, Jim began a two-decade journey that took him from the streets of Pittsburgh to the hills of San Bernardino, leading him into a tangled web of secrecy, deception, and shifting stories that forced him to reconsider everything he thought he knew about Vic, Eileen, and himself—and to confront the chilling question of whether his sister had really taken her own life.

Told with the precision and pace of a whodunit and the searing emotion of a family saga, A Better Ending is an unforgettable tale about the love between siblings, the murkiness of truth and memory, and the path to acceptance.

Sexual abuse is a highly complex phenomenon that encompasses the dynamics of sexual abuse, the wide-ranging effects it has on child victims and their families, the legal rights of all the parties involved, and the role played by professional practitioners working in this field. In addition, the emotionally charged nature of this phenomenon contributes in no small measure to its complexity.

Within these pages James K. Beggan puts forward a novel approach to understanding sexual harassment by high value superstars in the workplace. The approach integrates ideas derived from evolutionary theory, utility theory, sexual scripting theory and research on the regulation of emotion. Besides providing a better understanding of the phenomenon, the book aims to contribute to the development of better techniques to prevent sexual harassment. Recently, credible allegations of sexual misconduct against high profile figures have dominated the news. Sexual harassment has become an important issue for leaders and those who study leadership. The author presents a new approach to understanding sexual harassment in the #MeToo era that integrates research from a diverse range of areas typically ignored by researchers. Ideas derived from this new approach are used to propose more effective methods for the elimination of sexual harassment in the workplace. The book also addresses how efforts to prevent sexual harassment may interfere with the free expression of sexuality and ultimately threaten the rights of the individual. Academics and journalists interested in understanding sexual harassment, including graduate students, and undergraduates enrolled in upper division specialized courses in gender relations will find this book to be innovative and informative.

In hierdie opvolg op Daniël Lötter se eerste bundel moordverhale, 17 Maal Moord, wat einde 2020 verskyn het, vertel hy nog van Suid-Afrika se mees opspraakwekkende ware moordverhale in sy gemaklike en dikwels humoristies styl.

Nuwe lewe word geblaas in die slagoffers sowel as oortreders wat Suid-Afrikaners destyds na hul asem laat snak en dié verhale laat verslind het.

Guns are everywhere: three quarters of a billion guns - from pistols to machine guns - exist in the world today. And guns are everything: a hard-won symbol of individual freedom, an index of crime and disorder, a whole industry legitimately contributing to an economy, a popular piece of sports equipment, and an object of desire, endlessly duplicated by toys, video games and films. Open Fire presents a broad analysis of the social, cultural and political significance of firearms and the worlds they create. Illustrated with a wide range of case material - from North and South America, Europe, Asia and Africa - Open Fire explores and questions this global icon of our times. Why do guns proliferate? What does it mean to shoot or to be shot? Who owns guns and who does not? How is a firearm, a manufactured thing, very different from any other object? Is there such a thing as a "gun psychology"? How are firearms regarded in places where they are largely non-existent? Is a gun a different thing when held by a white man?

All over the world children are faced with social, physical and emotional turmoil that stems from varying degrees of violence. Abuse, neglect, abandonment and bereavement often affects these children and their education. This book highlights the plight of children and explores multi-sectoral approaches in providing sustainable psychosocial support. Quality education for vulnerable children is a top priority and an important discussion is to be had on how to support these types of students and children. This book is ideal for researchers, students, teachers, school administrators, public and private agencies, and anyone else interested in support and education for neglected, abused, and vulnerable children.

Are you repeating old patterns in relationships?

Do you struggle to express your boundaries, standards and core values with your partner?

Want to shift the narrative in your dating life and become the best version of yourself?

Too often, conversations about toxic relationships have revolved around them: their choices, their behaviour, their problem. Right?

Wrong.

Loving Me After We is here to set you you straight and help you on your path to healing. In this warm, encouraging and honest guide, psychotherapist Ginger Dean will show you:

• How your trauma responses can keep you trapped in the cycle of toxicity
• Why you choose unavailable but familiar partners
• How you can break free from co-dependency
• What you need to do to move on from the past to create a future where you can truly thrive

Here is the Cape Town underworld laid bare, explored through the characters who control the protection industry, the bouncers and security at nightclubs and strip clubs.

At the centre of this turf war is Nafiz Modack, the latest kingpin to have seized control of the industry, a man often in court on various charges, including extortion. Investigative journalist Caryn Dolley has followed Modack and his predecessors for six years as power has shifted in the nightclub security industry, and she focuses on how closely connected the criminal underworld is with the police services. In this suspenseful page turner of an investigation, she writes about the overlapping of the state with the underworld, the underworld with the upperworld, and how the associated violence is not confined to specific areas of Cape Town, but is happening inside hospitals, airports, clubs and restaurants and putting residents at risk.

A book that lays bare the myth that violence and gangsterism in Cape Town is confined to the ganglands of the Cape Flats, wherever you find yourself, you’re only a hair’s breadth away from the enforcers.

In his study of children and criminality, criminologist and research analyst Ronald Flowers provides an understanding of the relationship between child victimization and juvenile delinquency as well as a comprehensive review of the literature. Assessing the effectiveness of present conceptual frameworks, modes of research, and social and legal measures, he offers recommendations for furthering professional and research efforts in the field. His analysis blends the findings of leading experts and researchers in a variety of disciplines with relevant FBI and law enforcement data. An additional feature is the "model statute" for the study, prevention, and treatment of child victimization in all of its guises.

Rewatching on the Point of the Cinematic Index offers a reassessment of the cinematic index as it sits at the intersection of film studies, trauma studies, and adaptation studies. Author Allen H. Redmon argues that far too often scholars imagine the cinematic index to be nothing more than an acknowledgment that the lens-based camera captures and brings to the screen a reality that existed before the camera. When cinema's indexicality is so narrowly defined, the entire nature of film is called into question the moment film no longer relies on a lens-based camera. The presence of digital technologies seemingly strips cinema of its indexical standing. This volume pushes for a broader understanding of the cinematic index by returning to the early discussions of the index in film studies and the more recent discussions of the index in other digital arts. Bolstered by the insights these discussions can offer, the volume looks to replace what might be best deemed a diminished concept of the cinematic index with a series of more complex cinematic indices, the impoverished index, the indefinite index, the intertextual index, and the imaginative index. The central argument of this book is that these more complex indices encourage spectators to enter a process of ongoing adaptation of the reality they see on the screen, and that it is on the point of these indices that the most significant instances of rewatching movies occur. Examining such films as John Lee Hancock's Saving Mr. Banks (2013); Richard Linklater's oeuvre; Paul Greengrass's United 93 (2006); Oliver Stone's World Trade Center (2006); Stephen Daldry's Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011); and Christopher Nolan's Dunkirk (2017), Inception (2010), and Memento (2000), Redmon demonstrates that the cinematic index invites spectators to enter a process of ongoing adaptation.

One of the most famous writers of all time, George Orwell's life played a huge part in his understanding of the world. A constant critic of power and authority, the roots of Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four began to grow in his formative years as a pupil at a strict private school in Eastbourne. His essay Such, Such Were The Joys recounts the ugly realities of the regime to which pupils were subjected in the name of class prejudice, hierarchy and imperial destiny. This graphic novel vividly brings his experiences at school to life. As Orwell earned his place through scholarship rather than wealth, he was picked on by both staff and richer students. The violence of his teachers and the shame he experienced on a daily basis leap from the pages, conjuring up how this harsh world looked through a child's innocent eyes while juxtaposing the mature Orwell's ruminations on what such schooling says about society. Today, as the private school and class system endure, this is a vivid reminder that the world Orwell sought to change is still with us.