Nobody Heard Me Cry: An Irish boy sold on the streets, a whole life shattered

by JohnDevane (Author)

• Used

  Hardcover
  2009

  $3.50

  John was only a baby when his father died. His mother struggled desperately to bring up five kids alone but her own despair led her to alcoholism and blind rages. John's childhood was a nightmare of neglect and beatings, but when he was nine, things became infinitely worse. Preyed on by his mother's lodgers, John was sold into prostitution on the streets around the docks in his home town of Limerick. By the time he was 16, the legacy of pain from his childhood had left him suicidally depressed but a stint in the army and a determintion to escape his past gave John the courage to make a better life for himself. He trained as a lawyer and channelled his deep need to pursue justice for himself into his work for others. He built a reputation for defending the criminals of Limerick when nobody else would. One day, the unthinkable happened and he had to make a choice about whether to defend one of his childhood abusers. This is the extraordinary story of a life nearly destroyed by horrors and the hard choices one man made in his fight to recover himself.

• Used

  Paperback
  2008

  $18.72

  Nobody Heard Me Cry is the harrowing and painfully honest story of one young boy whose childhood was destroyed by sexual abuse. At the age of eight, John Devane was called from the street into the home of a trusted neighbour. There he was brutally raped, the beginning of four years sustained, secretive abuse at this man's hands. A few years on still not a teenager, he turned to a pair of trusted older friends for help. It would be to his cost. Instead of help, he soon found himself pinped on Limerick's Dock Road. The remaining years of his stolen childhood would see him used as a pawn by paedophile rings in Limerick and Dublin, initiated into sex parties where paedophiles from all walks of life serially abused and raped him and other young boys. Fatherless and with a violent, alcoholic mother and a family in chaos, John had nowhere to turn. And nobody heard him cry. here for the first time, he shares his remarkable story - of a lost childhood, of alcoholism and the devastation of abuse, and of a pivotal moment that would change everything when, years later, a practicing solicitor, he came face to face with a past abuser. Nobody Heard Me Cry is an unforgettable story of survival, and hope in the bitterest of circumstances.

• New

  Paperback
  2009

  $12.88

  John grew up in poverty in Limerick, Ireland, in the 1960s. Fatherless, and with a family in chaos, John fell prey to the predatory clutches of a neighbour, setting off a cycle of sexual abuse that eventually led to being sold as a teenage prostitute. Against all odds, John put himself through college and became a lawyer. But there was no escaping his past. One day, a man arrived in desperate need of representation and failed to recognise John as the boy he'd once abused. Now John had a choice to make...Nobody Heard Me Cry is both a devastating expose of a stolen childhood and an unforgettable story of survival. Most of all, it is a heartfelt plea to hear the cries of other children in need.