Kristine Irwin
Voices of Hope
Incredible Messages Press
www.voices-of-hope.org
Twelve years ago, Kristine Irwin was raped and dumped on the side of the road. In her debut memoir, Voices of Hope, released this month, she recounts her experience and how it affected not just her life, but also the lives of her friends and family.
Irwin was in her first year of university at Point Park College when she was sexually assaulted by someone she knew — the friend of another man she had been dating. This book tells of the events that lead to her assault and the harrowing details of the night that changed her life forever, but it spends more time delving far deeper into the aftermath.
Irwin was a decade into her recovery, when she realized how much the trauma she experienced continued to weigh on her. In the book, she writes it was because she hadn’t talked enough about the trauma.
“Currently, we have a culture of silence surrounding this topic,” writes Irwin. “The silence has multiple consequences.”
Stories like these are undoubtedly hard to get through, but each person who does, lifts the voices of sexual-assault victims a little higher.
