Breaking the Ruhls: A Memoir

By: Larry Ruhl

Narrated by: Matt Haynes

An urgent and timely memoir exploring the reality of childhood sexual abuse, a scourge on too many neighborhoods, often hiding in plain sight. Millions of victims remain silent, buried under the weight of their own guilt, shame, and addiction.

Breaking the Ruhls will resonate deeply with many who have experienced similar trauma, boundary violations, and abuse within the family, and struggle with the emotional and psychological effect. Ruhl mines his own experiences with sexual confusion, shame, PTSD, addiction and recovery, marital issues, career struggles, and therapeutic breakthroughs, while offering vindication on a range of issues and demonstrating it is possible to heal and thrive.

• 93 percent of juvenile sexual assault victims knew their perpetrators. For 80 percent of those, that perpetrator was a parent.
• This book shines a spotlight on the incessant plague of sexual abuse and help others shed the shame that sexual abuse survivors unfairly carry.

Larry Ruhl serves as a board member for Taking Back Ourselves, which facilitates weekends of recovery for survivors of sexual abuse, and is a registered speaker with RAINN (Rape Abuse Incest National Network). He previously served as a board member at Male Survivor, a leading organization in the fight to improve the resources and support available to male survivors of all forms of sexual abuse. Today he takes meetings into addiction treatment centers as a way to shed shame and draw the parallels between addiction and sexual abuse.

©2017 Larry Ruhl (P)2018 Central Recovery Press

The real effects

I am grateful to Larry for telling the truth about the effects of childhood sexual abuse, father-son assault in his case, along with profound dysfunction from both parents. I have heard such stories too many times in the past. I can imagine how helpful this book will be to other survivors, including those struggling to hold on. Thank you, Larry, for not keeping the secrets.