Why, Father‪?‬

A sexual abuse survivor tells her story in this memoir written with the help of the #1 bestselling author of Don't Tell Mummy and When Daddy Comes Home.

Gerri Mayo was only a young girl when she was first abused by her father. Growing up in a small village in Northern Ireland, in the tumultuous time of the Troubles, she had no one to turn to. He father's evil acts were followed by abuse from her local priest, arranged by her father. After her mother found out about the abuse, she committed suicide.


Gerri and her siblings were split up and placed in different foster homes. Told that her mother had committed a grave sin, Gerri's foster parents were far from kind to her. She experienced years of loneliness, feeling completely abandoned.


The abuse Gerry experienced was so extensive it required an operation to repair the damage to her body. When asked who or what had been responsible, she responded "the priest". But she was not believed in her small Northern Ireland town in the 1960s, where everyone believed a priest took his orders directly from God. After finally meeting her kind and caring husband, Gerry decided it was time for her story to be told. This is her true story of survival.