
Everyone Was Silent
Everyone Was Silent tells the story of a family devastated by the secrets they keep, the actions they fail to take, and the one powerful person they neglect to restrain. Can their youngest member, Dina Martinelli, stop the family’s nemesis–one of their own–to protect the next generation from harm?
DINA MARTINELLI GREW UP IN A FAMILY
WHERE EVERYONE WAS SILENT.
AND EVERYONE KEPT SECRETS.
INCLUDING DINA.
For over three decades, Dina Martinelli—now a young wife and mother—keeps quiet about what happened in her family all those years ago. She doesn’t disclose what her brother Jude did to her, and she doesn’t discuss her lifelong relational war with her mother, Jean, due in part to Jean’s struggle with mental illness.
But one day, Dina breaks her silence, and after that—with counseling and faith—her life gradually begins to improve. She even manages to forgive Jude. For abusing her in multiple ways. For years.
Until the day Jean reveals that Jude is abusing the next generation of the family. Can Dina convince the family that never protected her to speak out and act to stop Jude?
For survivors and their loved ones, for anyone whose childhood suffering is denied and ignored, Everyone Was Silent is a courageous portrait of intrafamilial sexual abuse that will help us protect our children.
In Everyone Was Silent, Diane Tarantini—body safety educator in public schools, child safety expert, author of the child safety book, The Brave Knight, and sibling sexual abuse survivor—tells her own story in order to:
- support survivors of child sexual abuse, child on child sexual abuse, and sibling sexual abuse
- educate loved ones about the survivor experience
- provide resources to survivors and their loved ones, as well as educators and professionals who work with youth
- Introduce the concept of “sibling abuse,” which can be physical, emotional, and/or sexual
What people are saying about Everyone Was Silent:
Diane Tarantini’s memoir of familial sexual abuse, Everyone Was Silent, crackles with tension from page one. The only daughter in a family of four siblings, she vividly describes how she dealt with her mother’s mental illness, her father’s emotional absence, and the cruel abuse of one brother. Yet, even as the events unfold, Tarantini’s writing is suffused with compassion, revealing how, with the help of her husband, her counselors, and her faith, she arrived at forgiveness for what she endured. Everyone Was Silent is a compelling read that offers an unflinching picture of an all too hidden issue. Kudos to her for her courage.
–Carter Taylor Seaton—award-winning author of four novels and four nonfiction works—holds the Governor’s Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Arts in West Virginia.
Diane Tarantini’s Everyone Was Silent tells a story that is both anguished and fragile, of one family long enduring the twin miseries of mental illness and generational abuse. There are no movie-of-the-week endings here, no neat resolutions. What there is instead is the other story, one of enduring faith and dependence on God’s grace, and of the possibility of forgiveness in the midst of the toughest of circumstances.
—Brad Barkley, author of Alison’s Automotive Repair Manual, Dream Factory, and Scrambled Eggs at Midnight.
Reasons to read Everyone Was Silent:
- You’re a fan of memoirs.
- You enjoy true stories about dysfunctional families.
- You get into stories with intense mother-daughter conflicts.
- You’re interested in stories that address mental health issues.
- You like to read family sagas.
- You’re a survivor of child sexual abuse (CSA) or love someone who is.
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