Serpent Child
By
​Patricia Riley

​Stairwell Books
www.Stairwellbooks.co.uk
 
 
Contact            Rose Drew        07914 271871
                        Alan Gillott       07914 271870
 
CHILD SOLDIER IN A SEPARATION WAR
Serpent Child by Patricia Riley:  Stairwell Books (2019), £10
 
YORK August 2020 
After an early childhood ravaged by family conflict, at age seven Pat Riley was made a Ward of Court. Far from improving her lot, however, the judgement condemned her to the life of a nomad, for the next ten years being shuttled every few weeks between boarding-schools and the homes of her warring parents. Her mother continued to demand her total loyalty; her father retaliated by getting Pat’s school to punish her for not siding with him.
Pat became determined as an adult to do whatever she could to improve the care given to children from backgrounds such as hers, becoming a social worker and foster-parent. Not content with those achievements, in retirement she has written of her childhood experiences in the hope this will help prevent today’s parents from making the mistakes her parents did. Serpent Child is the result, and it often makes for painful reading; although this is also a triumphant story of a strong, determined child. 
Parental alienation – the systematic brainwashing of a child by one parent to get it to reject the other parent – is nowadays recognised worldwide as emotional abuse. It is a factor in thousands of UK cases dealt with every year by CAFCASS, the Children and Families Court Advisory and Support Service. 
In a video introduced by Anthony Douglas, former CEO of CAFCASS, Pat reads an extract from Serpent Child, a book he considers a very significant contribution to our knowledge of survivor experience and one that should have an international reach. The video can be viewed on Stairwell Books’ YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvX4YwWgQxw&t=1s, and Serpent Child can be purchased from the publishers at www.stairwellbooks.co.uk, for £10 plus postage and packing.
Further information about CAFCASS can be obtained from https://www.cafcass.gov.uk/
 
Stairwell Books is a York based small press which publishes the works of local poets and writers. Stairwell Books is also the publisher of the international literary and arts journal, Dream Catcher. Further information is available from rose@stairwellbooks.com.
www.Stairwellbooks.co.uk
 
Stairwell Books 
161 Lowther Street
York, YO31 7LZ
01904 733767

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