Review by Booklist Review
Author Krouse has one of those faces that people tend to trust. Even complete strangers find themselves telling her their secrets, as evidenced by a lawyer who hired her and trained her to be a private investigator after he found himself oversharing during a chance encounter. Krouse was soon working on a groundbreaking Title IX case with national repercussions: proving criminal indifference by a major university's football program after years of multiple sexual assaults at drug- and alcohol-fueled sex parties. Krouse's skills helped her collect crucial evidence as both young women and Division I football players opened up to her. Readers soon learn that perhaps these people trusted her with their secrets because Krouse was hiding one of her own: years of childhood sexual abuse. Krouse weaves these elements into a compelling account as she describes building the case, including empathetic profiles of individuals involved, and shares her struggles with past and present trauma. With graphic descriptions of horrifying events, Krouse's brutal candor and perceptive insights make for powerful storytelling.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Novelist Krouse (Contenders) chronicles a benchmark sexual assault investigation in this enthralling blend of true crime and memoir. "I became a private investigator because of my face," she writes, describing a chance meeting in 2002 that led her to take a job investigating lawsuits. All too familiar with complete strangers confiding secrets to her, Krouse imagined interviewing others would come naturally, until she was assigned to investigate the rape of a college student. A victim of childhood sexual abuse, Krouse was wary of taking on the case, but, as she writes, defending her client, Simone--who was attacked at a party by players from her school's football team--gave her the chance "to change things forever." Over the next five years Krouse helped expose a culture of sexual violence, harassment, and corruption in the football program at Simone's university. When the scandal expanded into the "hidden world of athletic money," the investigation escalated into a civil rights case accusing the school of a "system of sexual abuse" that "amount to discrimination," and what began as a fight for one woman's justice becomes a battle Krouse fights against her own inner demons that eloquently contends with systemic issues still plaguing American institutions today. The emotional catharsis delivered by the book's end turns this sensational tale into a stunning story of redemption and hope. Readers will be gripped. (Mar.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Novelist Krouse's (Come Up and See Me Sometime) first nonfiction work is an expert, nuanced blend of memoir and true crime. While working as a private investigator for a law firm, she found herself on a Big 12 university campus investigating a gang rape allegedly perpetrated by football players. The survivor of the attack had engaged Krouse's firm to represent her, and the author began uncovering an institutional culture of violence that supported underage drinking and where school employees enlisted sex workers to provide services for athletes, all on the taxpayers' dime. Grappling with her own trauma as a survivor of child sexual assault, Krouse dove into seeking witnesses for a civil suit that would establish legal precedent for providing Title IX protections to students who are sexually assaulted on campus; because the school was fostering a culture of discrimination and harassment, it risked losing its federal and state funding. Though the campus, students, and staff are all kept anonymous in this book, characters are fully fleshed out, and Krouse deftly explores the complicated dynamics between the university, students, and college athletics. She seamlessly weaves elements of her own history into the narrative as she describes following leads, establishing a case, and fighting for justice. VERDICT Readers will devour this searingly intimate tale of institutional misogyny. An important addition for all libraries.--Mattie Cook
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
An inquiry into allegations of rape reveals a university's complicity in fostering a dangerous sports subculture. In this memoir, Krouse, a creative writing teacher at the Lighthouse Writers Workshop in Denver, explores her role as a private investigator working on a complex and eventually high-profile sexual assault case along with its relevance to her own history of abuse. In 2002, she was hired to help track down leads and interview key figures in a lawsuit being prepared against a university in Colorado. The university's celebrated football program, it was alleged, encouraged a culture of sexual violence and routinely sheltered athletes from facing legal consequences for criminal acts. Over several years, Krouse gathered key evidence for the attorney leading the case and was instrumental in persuading victims and witnesses to participate in the prosecution. The narrative that emerges is riveting and consistently insightful in its assessment of the psychodynamics of trauma for both victims and offenders; the valorization as well as the exploitation of male athletes; and the often volatile intersection of race, gender, and class in top-level college athletics. Rather than simply demonizing individuals, the author convincingly demonstrates how institutional practices have enabled (and covered up) predatory environments. "Perhaps by ghettoizing these men, isolating them, removing consequences, delivering regular blunt force trauma to their brains, and teaching them daily to hurt people," she writes, "the university was molding an elite group of potential perpetrators for its own financial gain." The personal narrative, interwoven seamlessly alongside the professional one, is equally compelling. In explaining the toll her involvement in the case exacted on her, Krouse movingly documents her attempts to gain from her mother an acknowledgment of the abuse she endured as a child--and to make sense of their deeply troubled relationship. An exceptionally well-told, perceptive examination of a sexual abuse scandal and its personal and social relevance. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
