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The Crimes My Wife Suffered
Truth is Indestructible is an emotional memoir of the abuse your wife sustained at the hands of family, and your journey to help others in situations like hers with social reform. Why was this an important book for you to write?
I was stimulated to write the book because of two main challenges. First, the crimes my wife suffered were so horrible, indeed so evil, that I found it hard to express them in words. I have found that music, as a non-verbal language, can express what usually lies beyond articulation. But I sought nonetheless to search for language suitable to convey the evil of the events. The second challenge was the ongoing cover-up of the crimes: I was horrified that my wife’s extended family chose to brush the crimes under the rug, and I felt compelled to bring the truth out into the light of day.
I appreciated the candid nature with which you told your story. What was the hardest thing for you to write about?
I wanted to narrate the story without giving too many details of the crimes. I hint in the narrative at the nature of the attacks on my wife, but I decided against providing the awful details. Instead, I looked at the significance of the crimes and how they relate to concepts of justice, retribution and truth.
What advice would you give to others that are in a situation like your wife was in?
I would suggest focusing principally on the victim’s healing. The search for justice is very important, but protecting the victim from further trauma is – in my view – perhaps more important.
What do you hope is one thing readers take away from your story?
I hope the reader will take from the narrative the importance of protecting children, as prevention is certainly better than after-the-fact detection. Also, even in the bleakest of situations, one can always salvage something positive, if only bringing out hidden truths.
Author Links: Amazon | Website
Stuart Nagero was born in the United Kingdom. He earned a doctorate from a British university and has worked in the United Nations system for more than two decades.
Truth is Indestructible
The names have been changed to protect the innocent — and the guilty — in this non-fiction memoir by Stuart Nagero. As a small child in India, Nagero’s wife, Vidhi, suffered seven years of brutal physical, sexual and mental abuse at the hands of her adult cousin, Varun. As Nagero makes explicit in the title, Truth is Indestructible is a husband’s reaction to learning of this part of his wife’s history.
This short book of only 52 pages focuses almost exclusively on the author’s reaction to learning of his wife’s trauma and his philosophical musings about the nature of evil and social reform. He tells Vidhi’s story in outline only. There are few gory details of exactly what Varun did to her, apart from a couple of examples of his depravity. Instead, we are told that when her family fell into poverty, Vidhi and her mother were placed by her absentee father with extended family. In this family, Vidhi became the “sexual target” and “punching bag” for a violent, psychopathic man seventeen years her senior.
When at last Vidhi confesses her history, she and Nagero seek justice, but there is no justice to be had. The police are not interested in such an old crime, and the family covers up and denies everything to save social face.
In a bid for a kind of healing, Nagero seeks to give a voice to the millions of other silent victims. He holds up Varun as just one example of an evil that infests the world, taking the specific instance of Vidhi’s experience and extrapolating that to comment on the human condition and society as a whole in which “evil individuals take advantage of the power and social taboos to protect them.”
Nagero is knowledgeable and articulate; through his novel, he provides a voice for his wife and other abuse victims. This memoir is a good read for those that want to know they are not alone, and that there is hope for the future.
Pages: 67 | ASIN : B09YT1MW5L
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