Please Will Someone Just Listen

About the Book

Please Listen to Us was written after hearing about so many survivors who had all experienced the deaf-ear syndrome not just from family and friends but from the professionals who should have picked up much earlier the symptoms and the desperate pleas of help and dealt with it. Support has always been minimalistic and still is, there is no monitoring or reassurance or screening for the survivors, and we are made to feel like we are hypochondriacs to say the least. We owe this to the families of the people who have died through lack of actions, who cannot voice what we have experienced firsthand, and I’m here to share my journey.

About the Author

Joan Sandilands was born in Sunderland in 1949, which provided me with endurance to achieve many things in life. Coming from a very poor background with dysfunctional family relationships and on the whole not a happy childhood but an opening to life’s pitfalls, moved to beautiful Durham in 1976, where my home is now. I was encouraged by Catherine Cookson in the 1980s to publish some of my work but never actually got around to doing this until personal circumstances inspired me to write this book. I had three children and was divorced in the 1990s, but this led to a very troubled life where I was always seeking solace by working ’round the clock to make ends meet, taking on two or three jobs to fund and to devote myself in my spare time to India, rescuing kids from slums or off the streets and finding them shelters, from which I gained many friends. This was my saving grace in my very lonely life to feel I had a use and a purpose.