The Little Prisoner
How a childhood was stolen and a trust betrayed
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4.8 • 4 Ratings
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From the age of four, Jane Elliott was forced to carry a terrible secret…
Dominated, bullied and sexually abused by her stepfather for 17 years, The Little Prisoner is a devastating true story of one girl’s struggle from freedom.
Held as a prisoner, subject to horrendous emotional and physical abuse, it wasn’t until Jane was 21 that she managed to escape. But it took another five years of living in hiding before she felt able to go to the police.
Nearly every witness who could have attested to the evil and violent behaviours of her stepfather was too frightened to come forward. Would the judge and jury believe Jane and her small band of brave supporters?
The Little Prisoner is the shocking, astonishing and ultimately uplifting true story of one woman’s shattering twenty-year ordeal; and how she triumphed over an evil and violet human monster when honesty and bravery were her only weapons. A heart-rending and inspirational tale of courage and survival.
Reviews
'An inspirational page-turner.' Heat
'The devastating and moving true life story of Jane's life. A powerful read.' Best
'A tragic tale, yet filled with hope.' Woman
‘This true story of an escape from a miserable childhood makes inspiring reading.' Woman & Home
About the author
Jane Elliott is a psuedonym. She first decided to tell her story to the police after taking inspiration from Dave Pelzer’s powerful memoir, A Child Called It. She become convinced she should not remain a silent victim but act against the evil stepfather who had kept her a virtual prisoner for so many years.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"The charts are full of stories of childhood abuse now," Elliott writes, and speculates that fans of childhood abuse literature "want to be shocked at the start of the book, crying in the middle and exultant at the end." Her account adds little that is fresh to the genre beyond that her "eventeen years was an astonishingly long time to have been systematically abused." A good part of this "true story of a four-year-old girl who fell into the power of a man for whom evil was a relentless daily activity" is devoted to the shock graphic detail of her stepfather's physical, emotional and sexual abuse. Some readers will feel for Elliott as she continues to be victimized by a thoroughly amoral lunatic head of an incredibly dysfunctional family; others may find that the explicit detail teeters perilously close to the pornography of violence and of sexual degradation. While Elliott's stepfather is eventually sentenced to 15 years, little exultancy follows until Elliott decides to tell her story and achieves British bestsellerdom. Elliott's account, written with Crofts, makes fascinating reading as one wonders, in page-turner fashion, whether anyone will stop this man from terrorizing his stepdaughter, her mother, her siblings and the entire neighborhood. The vagueness of time and place, however, raise disquieting questions about reality.
