Robyn - guidelines

Robyn is about the impact of child molestation on the victims and their families. It is not about the act of child molestation; however, in order to understand the effects, one must have some feel for their basis. I attempted to do this in chapter one. In this chapter a grown woman tells a bishop of her church about being molested as a child. In order to buffer what happened to her, I had her tell the story in second person, present tense. In addition there were some very short references to things other victims experienced.

Unfortunately, all of these references involving victims under the age of eighteen run afoul of legal bans and publisher guidelines. Together they add up to 1.07% of the book. Not much, but without them, the book loses the foundation of the impacts. I have tried to write this book, on and off, for nearly twenty years. It appeared that thousands of hours of work would end up in failure.

I could say things like; the man took her to the bedroom and they had sex, or there was inappropriate touching or oral activity. But what I wanted was for the reader to gain the deeper understanding of the details that caused the victims to feel powerless, alone, pain, unworthy, shame, fear, and all the other destructive emotions that create the lasting effects of molestation.

I worked on it all summer and finally I was able to accomplish what I wanted within the guidelines that were set. I gave the details but I didn’t give the details (?) So now I have edited the whole book again and had it professionally proofread. I have edited the comments from the proof reader and submitted the manuscript for final analysis. I hope to see Robyn published before the end of the year.