My Own Little Reading Room
Title: Perfect Match
Author: Jodi Picoult
ISBN: 9780340897225
Publisher: Hodder and Stoughton/389 pages
It seems I am in some kind of roll reading Picoult! This is my fifth book by her. She has written many books. Her books take up issues, which many of us wish to brush under the carpet. As someone said, her stories hit too close to home.
Perfect match too is not so different. It takes up an issue, which is any parent’s nightmare. That, a child being raped. Nina Frost is a DA who tries to prosecute child abusers. Most of the times, the culprit goes free. When her five-year-old son is sexually abused, the world around her crashes down. Now she cannot think in a detached manner expected of a lawyer. Her son is her only concern and she has to protect him from at any cost.
How she goes about it is the moral dilemma faced by her, her husband Caleb and her best friend Patrick Ducharme. A split second decision turns out to be horribly wrong.
The book opens with Nina shooting down a priest in the court who she believes has sexually abused her son, Nathaniel. After she is taken into custody, she ceases being the person she was. Her husband leaves home with their son when she is released on bail. She completely breaks down. Only person, who supports her and believes in her, is her childhood friend, Patrick who has always loved her.
From there, the questions start. Did she do the right thing? Is she morally right and legally wrong? Is her life finished? What goes wrong? Why does Caleb distance himself from her? Is she going to lose the very thing she is fighting for? Picoult has the capacity to show us all the sides. Her way of rendering a story is spellbinding. Her capacity to research and presenting it for the layman is praiseworthy. Her story telling is objective. It is we, who take sides.
I work for sexually abused girls. I see families breaking down. I get emotionally involved too. This hit me hard. How do we justify child abuse especially from the very person we trust? That too, from a father. Believe me, the child involved never recovers.
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Douglas Quinn
www.douglasquinn.com
I Malaysia, sexual abuse of children are getting higher by the day.
Read below to see this recent case. This is taken from The Star local daily:-
Child found sexually assaulted and killed
By RASHITHA A. HAMID
PETALING JAYA: She was just a little girl. But that did not stop some sick monster from killing her after sexually assaulting her.
Her naked body was stuffed into a sports bag and left at the staircase of a shop lot in PJS1/48 Petaling Utama yesterday.
There were bruises on her neck, suggesting that she may have been strangled. There were also bruises on her hands.
The girl, said to be between six and nine, was initially feared to be eight-year-old Nurin Jazlin Jazimin who has been reported missing. But Nurin Jazlin's parents, who rushed to the Hospital Kuala Lumpur mortuary, said it was not their daughter.
A supervisor with a book distributing company Cheng Yan Fang, 32, found the black-and-blue sports bag at 8.30am outside the premises. She thought the bag belonged to her employer who had just returned from Singapore.
Jack Yeoh Huat Lip, 51, the general manager of the company came in 30 minutes later and said the bag was not his.
When he opened it, he was horrified to see a pair of legs. He immediately called the police.
Gruesome find: The bag (inset) in which the body was found was just outside the premises of a book distributing company in Petaling Jaya.
"Saturday was a half day and the office was closed yesterday," Yeoh said, adding that the supervisor who left the office at 1pm on Saturday did not see anything near the staircase then.
Petaling Jaya police chief Asst Comm Arjunaidi Mohd confirmed a post mortem report that the killer had placed a cucumber and a brinjal in the girl's private parts.
"She must have endured so much pain before she died," he said.
Police believe the girl, whose identity has not been ascertained, had been dead for more than six hours before her body was found.
Police are appealing to those with missing daughters to call the district police headquarters here at 03-79562222. No arrest has been made yet.
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Just imagine what is this world comming to?!
Mimi
I just wanted to say I am finally going through my currently over 6,000 pieces of gather new mail that is in my inbox on here. So with that in mind I have finally come to a piece of mail that was addressed to me in regards this article submission you have created to share with the gather community. Thank you for taking the time and sharing your piece with us here at gather. :o)