Breaking The Silence: Stories From Survivors Of Sexual Abuse

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Many of the details that have been published recently about Israeli NGO Breaking the Silence, its funding, and activities are incomplete and inaccurate. He thought that was the best thing to do – to avoid what he perceived to be the double shame of firstly being sexually abused, and secondly being a male victim. He held both her hands in his weak grasp, but even with her there the desperate look did not leave his eyes. He tried to speak, the words coming out between his gasps for air. "Should...have...told..."he said. Healing, be it psychological, physiological or spiritual, informs this humane but too-familiar novel from veteran writer Chamberlain (The Courage Tree, etc.). Continue reading »

We'd spread out above Jenin on "the stage", which is a tiny mountain top. That evening an arrest mission was in progress, there were riots inside the refugee camp, and we sat above and provided sniper cover for the operation. Things got rolling and there were arrests, some rioting began in the city. In 2010 BtS published a highly tendentious book titled Occupation of the Territories – Israeli Soldier testimonies 2000-2010, which claimed to provide a counter to the “official Israeli position” on IDF actions in the territories. NGO Monitor analysis has revealed that this book was rife with methodological problems and appeared to tailor the testimonies to predetermined “analyses” that falsely claimed that Israeli actions are not aimed at self-defense but at “terrorizing the civilian population.” She leaned close to hear him. From that angle, she could see the stars of Aries through the hospital window. "Don't try to speak, Dad." She smoothed a tuft of white hair away from his temple. Based on financial information submitted to the Israeli Registrar of Non-Profits, in accordance with the Israeli NGO transparency law, Breaking the Silence received NIS 40,382,403 from foreign governmental bodies in 2012-2022. (See table below for detailed funding information).

Laura Brandon's promise to her dying father was simple: to visit an elderly woman she'd never heard him speak of before. A woman who remembers nothing--except the distant past. Visiting Sarah Tolley seemed a small enough sacrifice to make. She looked out the window again. Aries was gone, but she could see Jupiter near the center of Aquarius. She closed her eyes, and it was a minute before she realized that her father's breathing had stopped. Sitting very still, she held his lifeless hand in hers, as the room filled with a silence as deep as the sky. Sexual abuse affected many people in his family; his grandfather, aunt, cousin and dad were all abused too and did not confront their story. But what he didn't realise was that he was not alone in his family; his cousin Kelly Kavanaugh, 33, who features in his book, was also abused over a few years.

Chamberlain's latest novel (after Private Relations) is an empathic but honey-coated tale of one woman's journey into her long-buried past, and of the lingering impact of her disturbing discoveries. Continue reading »This was a very addictive read filled with so much emotion and intensity. Laura first loses her father, soon after her husband commits suicide, and since that wasn’t enough her daughter becomes selectively mute. Laura’s two main goals are helping her daughter recover from the trauma of death and fulfilling her father’ dying wish of watching out for an Alzheimer’s patient, who she has never met. Laura reconnects with her daughter’s birth father to help find a way for her daughter to heal. In December 2022, Breaking the Silence was a signatory on a statement claiming that the “occupation and apartheid in the occupied Palestinian territories have made Jewish supremacy the de facto law of the land and the new government seeks to adopt this into their official policy.” What we wanted to show by reading for 10 hours is that the things described in the testimonies we have collected are not exceptional, rather they are unexceptional," says Yehuda Shaul, one of the founders of the group and a former soldier himself.