Synopses & Reviews
In this courageous book, women break the silence about incest within Catholic families. Drawing on personal stories from interviews with survivors, Tish Langlois exposes the power relationships within families, clearly laying the foundation for a better understanding of why sexual abuse can occur and how women can reconstruct their identities and empower themselves. Langlois shows how official Catholicism benefits men at the expense of women and children through a gendered division of labour and a rigidly defined sexuality. She traces the lines of fault that emerge between Catholic ideology and women's actual experiences within families and argues that patriarchal religion can foster abusive relations.