Demons Hidden Within: Lifelong Impact of Child Sexual Abuse

by Susan Montgomery

This is Susan Montgomery’s true story of trauma, sexual abuse, abduction, an affair, and suicide. It is also a love story. At age eleven, she suffered sexual abuse at the hands of her father. With virtually no resources available, she buried the memory, which seemed moderately successful in that she finished college, has been married to her childhood sweetheart for over 60 years, and had three wonderful children. But as a young adult, her behavior began exhibiting self-destructive tendencies, the first being a life-threatening loss of weight down to 89 pounds. If queried, she would have been unable to explain this or her other aberrant behaviors. Devastated by the suicide of her 16-year-old son, she sought psychotherapy, where she began to better understand the underpinnings of her bizarre behavior. This quest became the basis of "Demons Hidden Within." A memoir written as an academic analysis of her life, Susan Montgomery cites 85 references from psychological literature to clearly link her strange behavior to the underlying but unrecognized effects of the sexual abuse. In Susan’s true story, she bravely tells all and holds nothing back, including running away with her three children, a scary sudden abduction off the streets of Chicago, a non-romantic sexual affair with a friend, delivering two of her children at home — all of this in addition to her bout with anorexia and quest to heal from the sexual abuse and her son’s suicide.

121 pages, Kindle Edition

Published April 28, 2021

Reviews

[M Schultz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This story is not extremely graphic or descriptive in details and I am thankful for that. It is horrendous enough to know that it is true and the effects are devastating enough. The author’s life was almost destroyed at several junctures due to her own careless actions. It seems an internal switch can be flipped and common sense leaves the area. How else can one explain the nonsensical and self-destructive actions the author engaged in? She certainly was unable to offer any reasonable reasons. That is one of the big clues to DID, Dissociative Identity Disorder, the author points out herself. DID is seldom expressed exactly the same way by any two individuals. It is frequently accompanied by inexplicable behavior and sometimes blacked out periods of time.
As unsettling as it is, this memoir gets 5 stars from me.