Jump to book subject area navigation Jump to general navigation Jump to start of page content
Search   
non fiction 

 

Afraid

Sharon McGovern

The heartbreaking but hugely inspiring account of a little girl's survival through extreme abuse and her inspiring fight for justice ...

At the age of four years old Sharon McGovern knew that her new stepfather was doing something he shouldn't, touching her in the wrong way and threatening her so she wouldn't tell her Mummy.

At the age of ten Sharon was raped by this monster, Michael Garvey, in a bed where her older and younger brother were sleeping. It was an act of unspeakable cruelty. And it was the beginning: every night Sharon would hear the floorboards creak; every night Sharon lay awake, praying tonight he would be quick and the nightmare would be over. The abuse Sharon suffered went on for thirteen years. She reached out to a councillor, the very first adult she had ever told of the abuse, and he told her not to tell such lies and never to speak of it again. And she didn't until the day, forty years later, a fellow victim of Garvey - his own younger brother - arrived at her door to tell her he was going to the police to report his brother for raping him. The report went nowhere and Sharon knew it was up to her to cage this paedophile for good.

With unprecedented bravery, Sharon went to the police and faced the terror of her life in the dock. She looked into the whites of his eyes and proved - beyond doubt - that this man was a threat to children everywhere. Garvey was jailed and convicted of seven accounts of rape and numerous indecent assaults. He still remains in prison today.


MR. JOSEPH COOPER – The author and the publishers wish to apologise to Mr. Joseph Cooper for a number of inaccuracies in “Afraid”. He is described in the book as an authority figure in Ms. McGovern’s life having met him when she was his student. We now accept that they first met when both were mature students at a writers’ workshop. We have agreed to alter future editions as well as apologise to Mr. Cooper.

Afraid

Buy Afraid from Amazon
£12.99
Hardback
256 pages
216 x 135 mm
ISBN-10:
ISBN-13: 9781409100225
Publication: July 2008
  Orion Group Publishing logo - link to home page Reading Room * * *