Forgiveness is a Journey with The Kavanagh Sisters
I'm thrilled to have the Kavanagh sisters back. These three women are an inspiring and powerful voice of hope, compassion and resilience. And they have an incredible sense of humor! I love them!
In their own words:
"We are three sisters born into a large family of ten children in the late-1950’s early 1960’s in a disadvantaged area of Dublin, where our father sexually abused us daily from age three or four right up to our late teens. In 1989, we made the decision to bring charges against our father and, in 1990; the Irish State took a successful case against him. He was convicted and sentenced to a term of seven years and was released having served five.
In 1992 we took part in a ground-breaking RTE documentary series entitled Tuesday File, Silent Scream (produced by Moya Doherty). Up to that point, RTE programs on child abuse always had the interviewee’s face hidden and voices distorted, but we openly volunteered to share our story and despite the attempted injunction by our imprisoned father, the documentary was aired on RTE in October 1992. The program won a Jacobs Award in 1992 and early the next year we were nominated for the Harvey’s/ Sunday Independent Irish Women of the Year. This program also went on to be used as a training tool for professionals dealing with abuse victims and won the US National Women’s Studies Association Award in 1994.
In September 2011 the book of our childhood experience entitled ‘Click, Click’ was published by the Hachette Book Group and went straight to number one in the Irish non-fiction bestseller list. In 2020 it was re-published under a new title ‘Our Father’s Secret’ in the UK by the Orion Publishing Group. The book has been described as “a powerful, emotional and sometimes harrowing story of childhood sexual abuse.”
I'm thrilled to have the Kavanagh sisters back. These three women are an inspiring and powerful voice of hope, compassion and resilience. And they have an incredible sense of humor! I love them!
In This Episode
Why Go Back?, Paula Kavanagh, Joyce Kavanagh, June Kavanagh
Click, Click, Paula Kavanagh, Joyce Kavanagh, June Kavanagh
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