Beating the Odds: From Shocking Childhood Abuse to the Embrace of a Loving Family, One Man's True Story of Courage and Redemption

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There's MUCH more where that came from! Want all the jaw-dropping stories from the world of showbiz and up to the minute news from TV and soaps? Unfortunately, I was really disappointed with Paul’s attitude throughout the entire book. He’s brought up in children’s homes with horrific experiences, so some could say that he practises all that he has ever known. But Paul’s mentality towards violence, and the amount of times he resorts to violence, is awful. He uses phrases such as ‘because they were scum and they deserved it’ to justify his actions; no Paul, violence is not justified just because someone is ‘scum’. He uses violence so much, that it is clear he is a bully just like the people he is brought up around, and yet doesn’t recognise he is using the same behaviours that he has grown up to despise. I cannot abide how he thinks violence in these situations is okay, and the way he talks about it is so blasé. In one act of violence he fractures someone’s skull. He also says that he has never been involved in petty crime. Perhaps never been involved in petty crime, but caused physical damage to plenty of people and avoided being caught.

The confrontation, which happened when Paul was 13 years old, meant that the abuse towards him stopped. Learning to read and write as an adultWith no real schooling and no positive male role models, Paul gained a reputation as a violent schoolboy, which at least protected him from the attentions of his potential abusers. When he was nine, he joined a boxing club. Here, he fi nally found a group of men who took him in, trained him and fed him. This book was a real eye opener for me and has made me grateful for my own childhood. Paul Connolly was abandoned as a baby and wound up in an awful children's home, where all the children suffered some level of abuse. This book was not easy reading at times as Paul explains how there was a lot of emotional, psychological, physical and also sexual abuse in the home. I felt my eyes fill up with tears many times. It is a true testament to just what a character Paul has managed to become though, as through all the horrors in his story he also managed to make me laugh out loud on multiple occasions. Connolly later discovered that six of the eight boys he had shared a dormitory with had died. Connolly said each had taken their own lives either by drug overdose or suicide.

For a survivor of sexual abuse, the rebuilding of their life is a monumental task. The deep and lasting hurt makes it impossible for many. They carry deep scars from their experience for the rest of their life. Connolly did not go to prison in reality. He learned to read at aged 25 and later published his memoirs titled “Against all Odds”.if I had not hidden under the bed most nights with my wooden-handled kitchen knife, I would have been raped, as well as the other boys”. [4] The five year long Royal Commission into institutional responses to child sexual abuse shone a light on the shortcomings of institutions in responding to the needs of victims. One of his trainers threatened his house-father over Paul's abuse and the harrowing torture stopped. Sept 20 Brentwood Gazette Billericay dad's tale of turning life around is now set for TV http://www.brentwoodgazette.co.uk/Dad-s-tale-turning-life-set-TV/story-27800959-detail/story.html His latest book, Not Normal , was released earlier this month and Paul says it is even more detailed than the first. Read More Related Articles