In this major new book, Mary Hamer offers a new perspective on incest, making a link with the scandal of sexual abuse on the part of priests. She explores the contradiction that while the occurrence of incest is widespread, it is almost universally a taboo subject. Hamer's novel and innovative approach removes the taboo from the discussion of incest, and places sexual abuse in the context of the whole social order.

Drawing on the work American psychotherapist Judith Herman, Hamer invites readers to focus on the neurological damage caused by traumatic experienced, arguing that it is overwhelming of one person by another by constitutes abuse, and this which causes the damages, not the fact of a close relationship. She revisits the real two-life cases of Father Porter from Massachusetts and Sappho Durrell, daughter of the British writer Lawrence Durrell, in order to demonstrate the inherent contradictions in official accounts of the subject, from genetics and anthropology to law. She also draws on the work of artists and filmmakers to explain the way film and literature have helped to preserve our understanding of abuse and its place in the world.

This book will appeal to all those who wish to think more clearly on this subject, including teachers of film and literature and those studying the sociology of family, psychology, anthropology and criminal justice.