(Helen Mulroney is a retired high school French teacher who lives in Bozeman, Montana.)
Ces Enfants Oubliés (These Forgotten Children) is a thorough and comprehensive guide for people wanting to escape the restrictive and often punishing world of a sect or cult. It is also a guide to help professionals as well as in the general public to understand and support these children and adult children on this difficult passage. The author serves as a witness and messenger for those taking this path. She sticks strictly to the role of allowing the victims to tell their own personal story without describing sects or law enforcement from the outside looking in. It is a vast collection of letters and journal entries from both men and women from all over the world.
Lorraine Derocher shows us firsthand, through the many testimonies, letters and journal entries, how difficult it is for victims to leave and succeed in the outside world. We hear the authentic voices of those suffering to separate from parents, their only source of security and love.
Her work is meticulously researched and footnoted, and is an important book for all those in the public sector of society as well as helpful for the public at large. You cannot come away from this study without some empathy for the children, their parents and even the cult/sect leaders themselves.
This book is a “must read” which I hope will be translated and published in English for a greater availability.
(Editor’s note: The book is published by Les Éditions de l’Homme. It is available in the U.S. through Amazon, in Canada at
https://qublivre.ca/collections/livres-biographies/products/cultes-religieux-ces-enfants-oublies and through FNAC at https://livre.fnac.com/a17158246/Lorraine-Derocher-Ces-enfants-oublies.)