My brother Patrick remembers my first beating, of which I assume I was completely unaware. He was just five years old when he watched our mother punching herself again and again in her pregnant stomach while shouting at the top of her voice, 'I don't want this fucking child!'

Ken and Patrick Doyle grew up in a family of nine children. For sixteen years their home was a place of suffering. Behind the doors of their ordinary, three-bedroomed house they were subjected to deprivation, cruelty and humiliation at the hands of the one person who should have loved and protected them - their own mother.

Starved, savagely beaten, locked up for days on end and sent out to steal, their story is a catalogue of abuse. Yet, despite numerous official reports of abuse from social workers and health boards, their suffering continued ...

In Mummy from Hell, the victims tell the horrifying true story of their childhood and how they survived it.

I guarantee you will never forget it. The story of Ken and Patrick Doyle has to be read. Others have been abused in similar fashion - some, like Baby P for instance, haven't lived to tell the tale. But Ken and Patrick Doyle have a simple lesson to impart, and it leaps from every line of the book. The protection of children requires that children come first - always -- Fergus Finlay, Barnardo's
Uniquely horrifying * Books Ireland *
Readers should steel themselves * Sunday Tribune *

Kenneth & Patrick Doyle were born and raised in Ireland. The story of the horrific abuse they suffered at the hands of their own mother was first revealed in Ireland's Sunday World. Ken now lives in the US and Patrick in the UK.