An Unthinkable Crime
The Hidden History of Sexual Abuse and a New Age of Reckoning
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An Unthinkable Crime
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Janelle Nanos
In 1896, Sigmund Freud presented a theory that he hoped would explain why so many of his female patients were suffering from “hysteria.” Many of them had experienced sexual abuse as children, largely at the hands of their fathers, and Freud had come to believe that this was at the root of their malady. But the idea was so terrible, and it implicated so many of the men in Freud’s Viennese social circle, that he eventually abandoned it.
In An Unthinkable Crime, Pulitzer Prize finalist Janelle Nanos shows how Freud’s denial reverberated for generations, fueling a professional culture of disbelief. Child sexual abuse was treated as “unthinkable”—a crime so taboo it was dismissed, ignored, or blamed on its victims. Then in the 1970s, a pioneering group of scholars and clinicians started to change the narrative. Nanos brings us inside the Harvard Trauma Study Group, where psychiatrists Judith Herman, Bessel van der Kolk, and others met to discuss what they, like Freud, were seeing in their patients. Their fierce belief in victims’ stories of abuse sparked a backlash in the 1990s, as groups like the False Memory Syndrome Foundation began questioning the veracity of recovered memories. The pendulum swung again when the Catholic Church scandals revealed the scale of the crisis and showed the prevalence of organized abuse.
Artfully woven into this larger history are the testimonies of three survivors: Kate Price, Adira James, and Alicia Cohen. Nanos follows these women as they struggle for equilibrium, seek accountability, and deal with the devastating aftermath of their trauma.
This engrossing, deeply reported book is the first to bring together the stories of survivors with the inspiring work of psychologists, law enforcement officers, lawyers, and advocates who have been fighting on behalf of children for decades. Freud may have looked away, but they have not, and neither can we.
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Critic reviews
“Riveting, maddening, and nearly impossible to put down, this searing history of the sexual abuse of children goes beyond the suffering to show how and why the prevalence of these heinous behaviors has been hidden for far too long. At times, readers may think they are devouring a true-crime thriller—that’s how expertly Janelle Nanos unspools the narrative. As the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and his co-conspirators continue to go mostly unpunished, this is the book the world needs right now.”—Amy Wallace, co-author of Nobody’s Girl
“An inspiring, enraging, and deeply clarifying journalistic work, An Unthinkable Crime not only dares to look closely at something our society has willfully ignored for generations; it also explains, in no uncertain terms, how this has happened—and offers three deeply moving stories of people who have lived through the worst consequences of that denial and refused to stay silent any longer.”—Robert Kolker, author of Hidden Valley Road
“An Unthinkable Crime is a book of stupendous scholarship that shows how a band of defiant academics, psychologists, activists, law enforcement officials, and uncommonly brave victims slowly revised history, rendering visible a sickening problem—child sexual abuse—that was as endemic as it was ignored. Janelle Nanos has produced a definitive work, a story that’s ultimately about validation, vindication, and reclamation. What an achievement. What a gift.”—Jennifer Senior, Pulitzer Prize–winning Atlantic writer and New York Times bestselling author
“An Unthinkable Crime is essential reading. Janelle Nanos has written a rigorous, deeply human account of why survivors haven’t been believed—and what it takes to change that. This book matters.”—Nadia Murad, Nobel Prize-winning author of The Last Girl
“A gripping and nuanced portrait of human beings wrestling with pain, love, harm, and the complexities of belief itself.”—Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad
“Written with sensitivity and a reporter’s instincts, this book will shake you up. How we talk about what happens to one in three American girls doesn’t just matter for social justice—it matters for how scholars, politicians, and police alike think about what it means to protect women from the very start.”—Cat Bohannon, author of Eve
“An inspiring, enraging, and deeply clarifying journalistic work, An Unthinkable Crime not only dares to look closely at something our society has willfully ignored for generations; it also explains, in no uncertain terms, how this has happened—and offers three deeply moving stories of people who have lived through the worst consequences of that denial and refused to stay silent any longer.”—Robert Kolker, author of Hidden Valley Road
“An Unthinkable Crime is a book of stupendous scholarship that shows how a band of defiant academics, psychologists, activists, law enforcement officials, and uncommonly brave victims slowly revised history, rendering visible a sickening problem—child sexual abuse—that was as endemic as it was ignored. Janelle Nanos has produced a definitive work, a story that’s ultimately about validation, vindication, and reclamation. What an achievement. What a gift.”—Jennifer Senior, Pulitzer Prize–winning Atlantic writer and New York Times bestselling author
“An Unthinkable Crime is essential reading. Janelle Nanos has written a rigorous, deeply human account of why survivors haven’t been believed—and what it takes to change that. This book matters.”—Nadia Murad, Nobel Prize-winning author of The Last Girl
“A gripping and nuanced portrait of human beings wrestling with pain, love, harm, and the complexities of belief itself.”—Rebecca Traister, author of Good and Mad
“Written with sensitivity and a reporter’s instincts, this book will shake you up. How we talk about what happens to one in three American girls doesn’t just matter for social justice—it matters for how scholars, politicians, and police alike think about what it means to protect women from the very start.”—Cat Bohannon, author of Eve
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