HarperCollins e-books

As the only surviving offspring of the Peyton family, Annabelle and her younger brother had always been unusually close despite the ten-year difference in their ages

This is Mr. Simon Hunt

He’s an entrepreneur.”

“You mean a financial speculator?” Annabelle

In time, he’d learned how the world truly measured the worth of a man. His rebelliousness was replaced by a very sincere desire just to stay alive. He’d learned to live in a world where a man’s word was his bond—breaking it could be a death warrant.

While the crack epidemic has economically damaged many communities, the larger social and governmental policy decisions have been far more destructive. Of course many children who grow up in challenging economic situations thrive, but the reality is that far too many don’t, and too many children’s futures can be determined by zip code. Children in poor neighborhoods frequently receive a substandard education, are often exposed to lead paint in poorly constructed buildings, have higher rates of asthma, and live in communities where there are little to no recreational or green spaces and where entire neighborhoods have been abandoned and forgotten by those in power.

Girls weren’t drug addicted, they were love addicted, and that, I’ll learn, is far harder to treat.

For most of them, violence is generational and abuse is hereditary.

The lessons that girls have been taught, implicitly and explicitly, about family and relationship dynamics are all fuel for the exploiters’ fire.

Like all forms of child abuse, sexual abuse teaches powerful, life-changing lessons and with an estimated one in four girls being victims of sexual assault or sexual abuse before the age of eighteen, it’s not surprising that sexual abuse often impacts families multigenerationally. Abuse that is passed down from grandma to mother to daughter, family secrets that are rarely shared. Girls and women bearing a silent burden.

Exploiters are utilizing the Internet more and more to search for vulnerable children and adolescents who can be used for both sexual and commercial purposes.