Kate Price, now an academic at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, has written a memoir detailing the horrific sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of her father. In 'This Happened To Me', Price recounts how she was abused from a young age until she was about 12, when her father left the family. She later discovered he had also been drugging her and selling her to other men at night.
Price, who researches commercial sexual exploitation of children, describes the book as a detective story piecing together clues about her past. She worked with journalist Janelle Nanos on a decade-long investigation that became a 2022 Boston Globe article. Writing the book, she says, was incredibly healing, allowing her to have conversations with her sister that they had never had before.
Growing up in rural Pennsylvania, Price witnessed her father's violence against her older sister, who later turned out to have also been trafficked by him. Price herself endured physical abuse, including being thrown down the stairs and having an X carved into her arm with a penknife when she was six. She found solace in education, vowing to create a happy family life for herself after seeing a friend's loving home.
Price has had decades of therapy, including pioneering trauma treatment with psychiatrist Bessel van der Kolk, who featured her as a case study in his book 'The Body Keeps the Score'. She manages her PTSD through therapy, exercise, sleep, nutrition, and a stable marriage, acknowledging the privilege that enables her recovery.
