"This harrowing account of abuse at the hands of a father and brother is shot-through with resilience, survival and justice."
The Letter, Sarah Sidebottom’s moving account of the horrific sexual abuse inflicted on her by her father and brother, opens the moment said letter arrives. A decades-old document from a doctor that changed everything. In Sarah’s words, having “grown-up on the wrong side of a wall of silence”, this letter “was an atom bomb. But it was also the key to a justice I had dreamed of for almost 50 years”.
Sarah then moves to recount, in unflinchingly raw fashion, how her father began abusing her when she was just three, leaving her in need of surgery. In the outside world, her father was well-liked: “He was popular and chatty and always happy to put himself out for people”. Behind closed doors, he was violent towards his wife, and sexually abused his daughter, threatening to kill her mother if Sarah ever revealed their “secret”.
Through her childhood and teenage years, while still being abused by her father — and her brother, too — Sarah summoned the strength to fight back and take a stand: “This was the uprising. This was me, letting them know I was wrestling back some control over my life. I was not beaten yet”.
In time, Sarah found love and a happy marriage, and now runs a charity with her husband that’s seen her invited to Buckingham Palace. She also found justice, thanks to the doctor’s letter that provided vital prosecuting evidence in a case that saw her father and brother jailed in 2022. Though incredibly harrowing, Sarah’s story is also one of hope and healing.
| Primary Genre | Biographies & Autobiographies |
| Other Genres: |
