Charlene Lunnon

I picked this book up at a neighbour's garage sale because the offences occurred in Sussex where I used to work as a police officer. Also because I am interested in missing persons cases.

Charlene Lunnon and Lisa Hoodless were abducted by paedophile Alan Hopkinson in 1999. They were located by 'chance' when the police attended the address they were being held in to make enquiries about other sexual offences against children. They had been subjected to terrible abuse for 4 days.

The girls tell the story themselves. Although the book was published some 10 years after the offences the telling is child-like which makes it more disturbing in some ways. One of the girls details how she had been abused already by a family friend so was 'used to it.' One girl's parents decided to separate just weeks after the ordeal so she had to endure the pain of her mother leaving the family and moving in with another man. Both girls hated the counseling they were forced to sit through for weeks on end, not wanting to dredge up memories of events that they would rather just forget about.

Both girls entered emotionally abusive relationships in their late teens and one became pregnant. The other later found a more stable partner and had a child, but she was still very young at the time. Once in their twenties, they restored their fragile friendship which had fallen apart after their shared trauma.

I wonder if there will come a point when the girls regret being as open as they have been about what happened to them. Their school friends were openly talking about it at the time which caused a lot of problems for them but that is understandable and there was nothing they could really do about it. But I question the wisdom of placing so much explicit detail in the public domain. They say that they want to make sure that the offences of their captor are known so that he will be unable to re-offend. Maybe that says something about their faith in the criminal justice system or lack of it...

This is a story told in explicit and sordid sexual detail. Every interaction is documented probably partly for the purposes of making a full-length book that would sell. I skipped the entire middle section of the book about their captivity as it was just too graphic. I don't see what possible benefit can come from anyone knowing such explicit detail about what happened to them.

The book was also full of bad language. I hope these girls, having survived their terrible ordeal, will one day realise that Jesus offers the only true hope for their lives and future. I can't recommend this book for Christian readers.



… (mer)