How children tell

This book describes a study of how children tell about their experiences of sexual abuse drawing on interviews with children adolescents parents and adults who have themselves been sexually abused in childhood. The author a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist who has over 20 years'' experience working with children families and adults in Ireland describes the painful and joyful journey of reaching out to share the secret and what this experience is like for those who have been sexually abused. She highlights the need for both sharing the secret and containing the secret and identifies three key dynamics that describe this process: firstly the active process of not telling others and the complex reasons for this; secondly the building up of a ''pressure cooker effect'' where both intrapersonal and interpersonal factors lead to a need to tell; and finally how the secret is confided rather than ''told'' and the need for ongoing containment as the individual shares the secret in different relationships across the lifespan.