In this courageous book, Tish Langlois challenges Catholic liturgy and ideology that benefits men at the expense of women and children. Through a gendered division of labour and a rigidly defined sexuality, Catholic culture can foster sexual abuse within Catholic families.

Working from the premise that sexual justice for girls and women is attainable, she exposes the power relationships that promote female obedience to the male head within families and the church. In conversations with survivors of sexual abuse, she traces the fault lines in each of these women's lives: that moment of realization when each of them understood that what happened to them was seriously wrong. Sexual justice, Langlois argues, is not an impossibility but something all women and men within Catholocism should strive to achieve.