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 New
in September 1999 from:
Herodias
346 First Avenue
NY, NY 10009
(Paul C. Williams, publisher)
Yvonne Maes with Bonita Slunder
A moving testimony that has already received publicity in England and Canada,
The Cannibal's Wife is the gently written, heartfelt and riveting story of
Sister Yvonne Maes-from her arduous childhood in the 1940s and 1950s on a dairy
farm near Winnipeg, Manitoba, to her decision to take vows in Montreal in 1959,
to the fulfilling of her life-long dream of becoming a missionary in Africa in
1968. Readers will be drawn to this attractive and spirited woman of the cloth
as she dedicates her life to the Catholic Church, to the education of the poor
in Lesotho, and to social justice for blacks against the backdrop of rising
tensions in South Africa. At age 46, her life is about to take a terrible turn.
With professional burnout upon her, she attends a church-sponsored retreat in
Durban, South Africa where she is sexually assaulted by her spiritual mentor,
himself a Catholic priest.
For the next eight years, Sister Yvonne is trapped in a web of sexual abuse
that destroys her spirit and her faith, condemns her to a living hell of secrecy
and shame, repeated sexual assault, and a powerlessness to reform, resist, or
expose her charismatic abuser. What follows is an intimate psychological
portrait of a woman left vulnerable to abuse by her molesting father (ironically
she becomes a sexual abuse counselor), and of a nun breaking silence within a
church seemingly intent on denial and cover-up. Her protracted battle for
justice under Catholic authority in England, during which Sister Yvonne is
literally re-victimized, ends with her refusal to abide an official gag
order-resulting in her conscious decision to leave her order and the Catholic
Church.
Yvonne Maes was born in Manitoba and served as a
Catholic nun for over 37 years. She is a former teacher at St. Mary's school
in Manitoba, the former headmistress of the Mabathoana High School in Maseru,
Lesotho and a former sexual abuse counselor at the Labrador Correctional
Center in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, Labrador. She lives in Vancouver, British
Columbia.
Bonita Slunder is a novelist, screenwriter,
and literary agent in Ottawa.
Memoir
5 ½ x 8 ¼ , 256 pages
ISBN: 1-928746-03-9
$25 (US) cloth
£16 in Great Britain
Major exposé on clergy abuse
Author interviews/talk radio
International publicity campaign
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