Childhood Interrupted, Kathleen O’Malley By Rachel Hopkins…

““Childhood Interrupted, Kathleen O’Malley By Rachel Hopkins | Tuesday 23rd January 2007 | 185 comments ★★★★☆ In this terrifyingly true story, set in the 1950’s, Kathleen O’Malley relives her disrupted childhood, in which she was seized from the confines of her home and forced to work in an Industrial School run by the Sisters of Mercy. Kathleen and her sisters were forced to leave home after Kathleen became the victim of a brutal sexual assault at eight years old. Her mother was found guilty of negligence and Kathleen and her two sisters became just three of thousands of Dublin’s ‘orphans’, who were physically and emotionally abused, stripped of their dignity and humiliated with beatings. This story is not one of self-pity and resentment that is so often found in books of this nature but is one of survival and success; despite this horrendous experience, the author tells of her escape to England in a desperate search for a better life and now confronts her hidden past in a beautifully written journey through her childhood, which is bound to captivate your imagination and draw you in to the daily terrors that greeted the O’Malley sisters. Impossible to put down, this book is a truly remarkable story and certainly well worth a read. publisher: virago price: £10.99””

— Kathleen O'Malley