AVAILABLE JANUARY 26, 2027
AVAILABLE JANUARY 26, 2027
An Unthinkable Crime: The Silent Epidemic of Sexual Abuse and a New Age of Reckoning
A sweeping history of how child sexual abuse has been systematically concealed and minimized for decades—and how a courageous group of survivors, psychologists, and advocates are fighting to expose the truth.
By Janelle Nanos
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In 1896, Sigmund Freud presented a theory that he hoped would explain why so many of his female patients were suffering from “hysteria.” Many of them had experienced sexual abuse as children, largely at the hands of their fathers, and Freud had come to believe that this was at the root of their malady. But the idea was so terrible, and it implicated so many of the men in Freud’s Viennese social circle, that he eventually abandoned it.
In An Unthinkable Crime, Pulitzer Prize finalist Janelle Nanos shows how Freud’s denial reverberated for generations, fueling a professional culture of disbelief. Child sexual abuse was treated as “unthinkable”—a crime so taboo it was dismissed, ignored, or blamed on its victims. Then in the 1970s, a pioneering group of scholars and clinicians started to change the narrative. Nanos brings us inside the Harvard Trauma Study Group, where psychiatrists Judith Herman, Bessel van der Kolk, and others met to discuss what they, like Freud, were seeing in their patients. Their fierce belief in victims’ stories of abuse sparked a backlash in the 1990s, as groups like the False Memory Syndrome Foundation began questioning the veracity of recovered memories. The pendulum swung again when the Catholic Church scandals revealed the scale of the crisis and showed the prevalence of organized abuse.
Artfully woven into this larger history are the testimonies of three survivors: Kate Price, Adira James, and Alicia Cohen. Nanos follows these women as they struggle for equilibrium, seek accountability, and deal with the devastating aftermath of their trauma.
This engrossing, deeply reported book is the first to bring together the stories of survivors with the inspiring work of psychologists, law enforcement officers, lawyers, and advocates who have been fighting on behalf of children for decades. Freud may have looked away, but they have not, and neither can we.
Praise for An Unthinkable Crime
“Riveting, maddening, and nearly impossible to put down, this searing history of the sexual abuse of children goes beyond the suffering to show how and why the prevalence of these heinous behaviors has been hidden for far too long. At times, readers may think they are devouring a true-crime thriller—that’s how expertly Janelle Nanos unspools the narrative. As the crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and his coconspirators continue to go mostly unpunished, this is the book the world needs right now.”
Amy Wallace
Coauthor of Nobody’s Girl
“An Unthinkable Crime is a staggering work of investigative history, tracing the vast reach of child sexual abuse and the intricate machinery of denial that has allowed it to flourish. With extraordinary care and narrative command, Janelle Nanos uncovers something far more troubling than ignorance: Again and again, the evidence was there, and respectable people found ways to explain it away while the institutions charged with protecting children instead shielded perpetrators and discredited survivors. I finished this absorbing, fearless book with my understanding rearranged. This is journalism of the very highest order.”
Brian Goldstone
Pulitzer Prize–winning author of There Is No Place for Us
“Child sexual abuse profoundly harms its victims at a time when they are most vulnerable to lasting effects. Janelle Nanos’s compelling and comprehensive look into the cultural response to this abuse underscores the systemic project of denial that, at every step, has obstructed and suppressed survivors’ brave fight to be heard. These survivors are made to bear the brunt of society’s inability to grapple with this issue. Nanos, admirably, refuses to look away.”
Roxanna Asgarian
Author of We Were Once a Family
“Written with sensitivity and a reporter’s instincts, this book will shake you up. How we talk about what happens to one in three American girls doesn’t just matter for social justice—it matters for how scholars, politicians, and police alike think about what it means to protect women from the very start.”
Cat Bohannon
Author of Eve
“An inspiring, enraging, and deeply clarifying journalistic work, An Unthinkable Crime not only dares to look closely at something our society has willfully ignored for generations, but it also explains, in no uncertain terms, how this has happened—and offers three deeply moving stories of people who have lived through the worst consequences of that denial and refused to stay silent any longer.”
Robert Kolker
Author of Hidden Valley Road
“An astonishing, trenchant, and deeply reported labor of love, An Unthinkable Crime forces us to reconcile two apparently incompatible truths: Many of us find it impossibly difficult to contemplate childhood sexual abuse, yet the crime is extremely common, befalling one in three girls and one in nine boys. In spare and elegant prose, Janelle Nanos shows us exactly how this is possible: We have looked away and enabled networks of abuse to operate and entrench themselves, to the detriment of children everywhere. Bold, brilliant, and devastating, this book demands to be read and discussed far and wide and loudly. I cannot stop thinking about it.”
Kate Manne
Author of Entitled
“An Unthinkable Crime is a book of stupendous scholarship that shows how a band of defiant academics, psychologists, activists, law enforcement officials, and uncommonly brave victims slowly revised history, rendering visible a sickening problem—child sexual abuse—that was as endemic as it was ignored. Janelle Nanos has produced a definitive work, a story that’s ultimately about validation, vindication, and reclamation. What an achievement. What a gift.”
Jennifer Senior
Pulitzer Prize–winning Atlantic writer and New York Times bestselling author
“A gripping and nuanced portrait of human beings wrestling with pain, love, harm, and the complexities of belief itself.”
Rebecca Traister
Author of Good and Mad
“An Unthinkable Crime is essential reading. Janelle Nanos has written a rigorous, deeply human account of why survivors haven’t been believed—and what it takes to change that. This book matters.”
Nadia Murad
Nobel Prize–winning author of The Last Girl