In December 1992, a nine-year-old girl was kidnapped and locked in a secret underground dungeon. She was chained by the neck in a coffin-shaped box. She was regularly raped. She thought she would die in that dank, dark hole. But, somehow, she survived to tell the tale.
Virgin Books is proud to publish HELP ME by Katie Beers, an extraordinary true story which has already shot straight into the Top Ten in The New York Times.
But perhaps what's most troubling about Katie's tale is that, as the world started hunting for this lost little girl, it uncovered a horrific scale of abuse carried out by her godparents before she was taken. Katie was neglected. She was treated like a slave. She was sexually abused from the age of two. And no one had ever noticed, or cared, or helped.
Katie needed to be rescued ... instead, she was groomed by another paedophile and taken to a dungeon hell.
In HELP ME, Katie recalls memories long since buried, writing together with the journalist who uncovered the awful crimes against her, to create a unique book: part crime thriller as the search for Katie intensifies; part inspiring memoir, as Katie frankly describes the horror of facing your own death, and tells us how she survived to build a new life.