Chains Can Be Broken

Betty Lee Wilson recounts her own experience in this memoir, which aims to show that people harmed by abuse can heal. She also holds that an abuser can find forgiveness, but only after owning the crime and asking for it. The book makes no appeal for pity. Its purpose is to stir awareness and righteous indignation at the chain of injustice and ruin that any abuse sets off, since unhealed trauma can pass its damage down through generations. Wilson argues that anger, when it is directed carefully and shared among many people, can produce real change.

The book speaks to anyone who has survived abuse of any kind, whether physical, emotional, sexual, spiritual, or involving substances, or who knows someone who has. It follows the descent through that chaos into a reality where the author could finally see clearly and find light.

Wilson also contends that current child abuse and sexual assault laws offer abusers little more than a mild reprimand. In her view, survivors are left to live with the damage to their minds and bodies while their sense of self gradually erodes, and the law, by failing to respond seriously, implies that what was done to them was acceptable.