This inspiring memoir describes a hard-won life of achievement. In the face of overwhelming adversity, Mary Elizabeth Bullock makes her name as an experienced trial litigator, a respected business law professor, and a federal civil rights judge. She finds brilliant success in spite of being blind, and being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis and systemic lupus, and despite having enduring a childhood poisoned by unspeakable abuse. Her book offers hope and motivation to others who have been cruelly betrayed by those who should have been their protectors. It holds knowledge that can help heal adults damaged by sexually abusive childhoods, and it offers understanding and support to those who love them. When she was a helpless child, Bullock's father sexually abused her for ten plus years, She was beaten, tortured, sold into sex slavery and molested in physically and psychologically unbearable ways. Perhaps worst of all, he taught her to believe that the evil he did to her was her own fault. Bullock chose to finally tell her story in the hope that others might see that they are not alone, that their stories of abuse do not have the last word. Child sexual abuse is frighteningly common. Nevertheless, the realities of child abuse are often denied by people who cannot bear to believe that it exists. Some of those abused as children grow up to disbelieve their own stories, or to minimize the damage their brutal past has done them. As a child, Bullock suffered horrific abuse, alone and without support. As a young woman, she was drive to succeed, in spite of what was done to her. She invented a different public personality for herself, once she was able to escape. Outwardly, she donned the armor of achievement and success by garnering high academic honors and rising to a position of power and influence. Taking full advantage of the scholarships she won, in spite of her chaotic home life, she earned the necessary education to advance her out of the degrading life she grew up in. As an adult, she began a legal career that allowed her to help the disenfranchised, disillusioned and dispossessed. But even after achieving a life that would make anyone proud, under her polished and professional exterior, Bullock was always uncertain, and aware of the past that relentlessly pursued her. Time after time she found herself in negative relationships, never understanding why she was continuously drawn to shattered men, childishly selfish men, and men who hated women as they tried to love them. Through years of seeking, she gained understanding of herself and of others like her. At last, finding her own peace, she made truce with her unforgotten past and gained the necessary self-esteem needed to build genuine relationships. Mary Elizabeth Bullock thanks God for saving her from a life of despair. She hopes, with this heartfelt memoir, to share her experience and hard-won knowledge that healing is possible, and that a life worth living is attainable. In this memoir, she proves that the human spirit can triumph over the longest odds.
About the Author: Honorable Mary Elizabeth Bullock is a retired federal civil rights judge for the United States Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Prior to her appointment she was a respected Business Law Professor at the University of San Diego School of Business and in the joint JDMBA program where she taught business and legal ethics. Bullock had her own legal firm where she practiced employment law as a trial litigator, and has worked for and with larger law firms as a trial litigator in employment law cases. She served as an elected official, mayoral appointee, Board of Directors for California Women Lawyers, arbitrator and mediator for the Better Business Bureau, California State Bar Probation Monitor and Special Deputy Trial Counsel for violations of Judicial Cannons for the California State Bar, avid public speaker and writer of numerous articles, especially on judicial and government corruption. She has devoted a lifetime of work to the disenfranchised, disadvantaged and disillusioned. She is heavily involved in child advocacy and the complete reformation of Child Protective Services.