Hra na pavoučka – Zuzana S. (2014)

This Czech-language book tells the true story of a girl who was sexually abused by her stepfather from the age of four. What began as an apparently innocent game called “Spider” grew increasingly brutal and culminated in rape when she was nine. The subsequent ordeal includes repeated sexual attacks by her stepfather and his accomplices, beatings, drugging, emotional blackmail, unwanted pregnancies and forced abortions. Her life is repeatedly at risk, and in attempts to escape her traumatic experiences she nearly overdoses on medication, cuts herself with razor blades and almost bleeds to death after stabbing herself in the abdomen with a shard of glass. The abuse takes place behind the façade of an outwardly respectable family, while her mother, relatives, institutions, courts and social workers all fail to help her. The account continues into her adulthood: now a mother of four, she studies social and legal work, explores art-therapy methods and has undergone extensive therapy and repeated psychiatric hospitalizations. Her relationships with men remain troubled, her former husband was a pedophile who abused her sons and later killed himself, and she still feels unsafe around her former tormentor. For the sake of her children, however, she is determined to overcome everything and sends a message of hope to others suffering and calling for help.