Just a boy : the true story of a stolen childhood

One October night in 1975 Richard, aged five, was alone in the house with his three sisters. It was 3am and their mother hadn't come home yet. Next morning, the police arrived to take the children away. Their mother had become the first victim of a serial killer soon to become known as the 'Yorkshire Ripper'. Passed from one violent home to another, the children were forgotten by all except the press. As the salacious headlines multiplied, Richard and his sisters were never able to recover from their mother's murder. Whilst Richard tried to handle the terror of his violent upbringing, his sister struggled to deal with memories of sexual abuse. Without love or support they spiralled away from help or happiness. Then one day Richard McCann, having reached suicidal rock bottom, decided no one was going to rescue their lives but him. It was the beginning of an inspirational transformation. Now he is able to tell the story of how the forgotten children of violence suffer, and how they can heal. A heartbreaking, uplifting story of survival and hope. In Richard McCann's best selling account of his childhood, he told the harrowing story of how he and his sisters were left motherless when the Yorkshire Ripper killed his first victim, Richard's mother Wilma McCann. Just A Boy was praised for its unflinching andunsentimental account of a neglected childhood at the hands of an abusive father and uncaring authorities. The only constants in his and his sister's lives were grief for their mother and newspaper coverage of her killer and the gruesome nature of his crimes. With his book in the bestseller charts Richard sets out to make sense of his past, attempting to meet the other children of Sutcliffe's victims and discovering the secrets of the mother that was taken away from him. McCann comes to terms with the loss of his own childhood by talking to others, hearing their stories, and learning about how to accept whathas happened and move on. Richard McCann's account of his childhood became a massive UK bestseller. The Boy Grows Up is an account of how Richard used the success of Just A Boy to try and save his sister, and of his attempts to make sense of his past whilst learning more about the effects of traumatic childhoods and loss. The son of the Yorkshire Ripper's first victim tells the story of his childhood of neglect and abuse after the murder of his mother Wilma McCann