Shattering Silences

by Christopher Johnston

Every two minutes someone in the US is sexually assaulted, and each year there are nearly 300,000 victims of sexual assault. But victims are no longer silent, and new practices by police, prosecutors, nurses, and rape crisis professionals are resulting in more humane and compassionate treatment of victims and more aggressive pursuit and prosecution of perpetrators.

Shattering Silences is the first book to cover these new approaches and partnerships. Christopher Johnston shows how the people and organizations implementing these new approaches are having far-reaching impacts on helping victims heal and making it more likely that predators will be arrested and sentenced. His in-depth portrayals of the altruistic and hard-working people behind these radical approaches—based on seven years of interviews—provide a template of best practices for other organizations and communities to follow. With sexual assault taking center stage these days, this book is more important than ever.

AVAILABLE FOR PRE-ORDER:

Amazon.com  | IndieBound.org | Skyhorse

The Way I Saw It.

Marc Wyse, with Christopher Johnston.

I don’t know about you, but I grew up in a great time and in a great neighborhood. Maybe I say this out of nostalgia all these years later, but if I look at how kids live and play today, l can claim with confidence that ours was a simpler era.

My life in Cleveland began, fittingly, on a Monday, April 9. 1923, when I was born Marcus Allen Weiss. The stork had deposited my brother, Jacob (Jack) Edwin Weiss, almost exacdy nine years before me on April 4, 1914. The Weisses lived downstairs in a two-family home at 3645 East 154th Street, jusr south of Kinsman Avenue in the Kinsman neighborhood. My parents rented from Mr. Wurtzner, who lived upstairs. My window looked at our neighbor’s house. I could almost touch it. As sure as sunrise, the milkman placed milk bottles in our milk box, and a local baker regularly dropped off hard rolls or biscuits at our door.

Back then, it was mostly a Jewish and Italian neighborhood, but there was a great mix of ethnicities. My friends came from all different heritages, and a diverse group of neighbors would come over and sit on our big front porch and talk. A bunch of the tough guys from the neighborhood liked to hang out at the bowling alley on the corner of Kinsman and East 154th. Across the street, streetcars would come around and go back downtown to Public Square…

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