Eating the Elephant: Do you really know the man you married?

At first glance, Alice Wells and her young children seem to be an ordinary family grieving the death of a father and husband in a tragic car accident. In reality, her story offers the reader a rarely told perspective – a mother’s account of the impact of a husband’s devastating addiction to internet child pornography and how this dark world reached right into the heart of her own home.

But Alice’s story is about so much more than the impact of sexual abuse. This is not a depressing book. This a fascinating and insightful journey.

As a doctor, as well as a wife and a mother, Alice eloquently and intelligently tackles her own complex feelings of bereavement – mourning a man she loved and set up a life with, while slowly having to reconcile herself to the unfolding knowledge of his hidden life as a paedophile.

At the centre of Alice’s story lies the wise question that helped her through it all: How do you eat an elephant? How do you face and break down the unthinkable, the insurmountable.

And so piece by piece she explores the emotions, the practicalities, the accusations from other parents, the guilt, misplaced feelings of responsibility and the difficulty of finding anyone else who might begin to understand the unspeakably taboo world she now inhabits.

Yet through all of this shines her deep love for her children, her optimism, her belief in recovery and her focus on a bright future for them as a family and as healthy, happy, balanced individuals.

Despite the rise of extreme internet pornography in this internet-centric, international society and the resulting abuse of children, few are brave enough to talk about the fallout. Alice discovered there is little in place to help the young victims and the adults caring for them to adequately deal with it. But by speaking about these issues – by shining a light into dark places, maybe things can change…