When Sally was 9...A Story of Child Abuse

This is a true story and first began in Singapore. Many names and events have been altered to protect the identity of the individuals mentioned in this story. "When Sally was 9..." is part of a series that discusses abuse in an Asian society.

Abuse, regardless of its forms, is a repressive situation where the victim is self-induced into a constant state of submission, sometimes, bearing little or no ability to protect from this perpetual onslaught of terror and injustice. At most times violence is used to effect submission but in the case of "When Sally was 9...", you will see that violence is not always the approach that perpetrators take to render control over their "victim".

In this initial book, you will not only find yourself developing a distaste for the father but you will also see bits of Singapore as it happened through the victim's eyes. There is racism, there is of course the unhappiness that emanates from Sally's own home and there is the challenge of being a minority that arises from being in a country like Singapore. At the time the character was growing up, Singapore was also enjoying the independence of being an autonomous state of its own. It had just gained independence from Malaysia and was fast becoming a powerful nation of its own but for Sally as an Indian, it was a struggle when being Indian meant being second class, when being brown means you are considered “dirty”. "When Sally was Nine" details the life of a young Asian child as she maneuvers life through a rocky path where being a girl in a home dominated by a tyrannical and manipulative father means life is just not caked to be too pretty in the end...