Attending a book launch.....Point of Rescue.

On Friday night Peter and I attended a book launch. I have never been to one of these before, and even though I have self published a couple of books, I haven't had an official launch like this.

The author is Ricky Hunter. She has had a pretty tough life, affected by sexual assault when she was 5 years old, and then experienced a violent marriage. She had six years with her husband before she left. It was much harder in the 1970's to leave your husband if you had no money etc, and to get right away she left her home country.

The main theme of her books, she has written two, which is really her life story, plus much self help material, is how it is possible to recover after facing extreme hardships in life, in her case, a violent marriage. She is a great writer, and they are the sort of books that once started you can't put down.

She had some very interesting speakers. One was a lawyer from the Family Courts, who deals with family violence all the time. Another was from RSPCA. Lots of people don't realise that there is a close relationship between people who abuse animals and people who abuse other people. A huge percentage of people who abuse their partners, also abuse animals. It seems to be one of the first things to look for. The RSPCA runs a special program called Pets in Crisis.  So if someone, and it is generally women, but not always,  want to leave a violent home situation but have nowhere for their pets to go, then RSPCA will take them for a month and care for them until the abused person gets somewhere to live. Its a great arrangement. Ricky is a strong advocate for this work by the RSPCA.

This is the team she works with, from left to right, Dawn Spinks, Ricky Hunter, Chris her P.A. Jan Sky and Gil Holmes.

So it was really interesting to talk to different people there and those involved in this kind of work. I think it takes a special kind of person to work with people suffering traumas of some sort. There were other counsellors etc there too, Jan Sky from Sydney, and the launch speech was given by Dawn Spinks, a local person very involved with counselling agencies too. All the speakers were highly qualified in their own areas of expertise, and very interesting to listen to.

Not only has she written these two books but she also conducts workshops all round Australia, educating counsellors, doctors, psychologists etc, on many different aspects of domestic violence. You might like to visit her website....www.rickyhunter.org.

Here is the cover of her book.

 Check out her website, you will find some interesting information there.