This biography is well written but the story is difficult to read. It’s the true story of a young girl who was sexually abused by her pediatrician. It provides excellent illustration of a predator’s selection and grooming techniques. The doctor put both mother and daughter through a series of tests while acting as the girl’s doctor, just to see how far he could go – right in front of the mother. Being a trusting woman who harbored the commonly-held belief that medical professionals are implicitly trustworthy, the mother did not see any problems until it was too late.

This is the kind of thing people need to know how to spot and deal with. These are the activities that children need to be taught to recognize and directly, openly and verbally address, instead of being placed in a state of fear:

The whole time during which he had been touching me, I had felt powerless to say anything. I had been intimidated by him, and worried about what Mum might say, because she clearly trusted him. I was afraid, I was only small, and he was so big. Mum couldn’t have picked up on any of his strange behaviour, or else she would have questioned it.

–Doctor’s Orders by Hannah Wingfield