Pick Up the Pieces - Charmaine Richardson

Charmaine Richardson’s highly personal and revealing account describes how she was abused as a child within her comfortable, middle-class London home. It describes the ‘time bomb’ for her and her family, something that led to depression, counselling and a chance meeting with sex-offender expert Ray Wyre, who she married in 1999.

A large part of the book is given over to her life with Ray, his work at the Gracewell Clinic and an analysis of his book with Tim Tate, The Murder of Childhood (2nd Edn., Waterside Press, 2018) and the failure of politicians to heed his warnings about how we need to understand and deal with perpetrators.

The book also contains the author’s own views on bringing-up children to feel safe, comfortable and resistant to the devious ways in which paedophiles operate, including through the language we use with ‘little people’.