Sister Of Silence: A Memoir

Note: In view of the “Rape Academy,” a huge subculture where men teach each other how to drug and rape their sleeping wives, which CNN exposed in 2026, the first four graphs of this original post were updated on May 20, 2026.

Sister Of Silence is the true story of one woman who refused to be silenced, after being raped by her husband for ten years.

This memoir tells Daleen Berry’s story, while exploring one of the largest epidemics of our time—sexual violence against women. Daleen does this in a manner that is, by turns, both calmly detached and full of gritty emotion. Sister Of Silence examines how this pervasive violence has led some women to consider suicide or even murder as a way out.

Sister Of Silence is the first book of its kind, written by a New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning journalist who is daring enough to reveal how she arrived at that point of no return. More important, it explores how she found the resilience to survive and the strength to walk away—ultimately saving her life.

The most recent data (2024) from RAINN states that someone is sexually assaulted almost every minute in the U.S. Statistics show that of that number, 90-percent are female. In addition, familial violence results in 1,300 deaths annually, as well as two million injuries. Indeed, experts say10-14 percent of married women in this country are raped by their husbands.

But since most violence against women goes unreported, experts say from 960,000 to 4 million women are physically assaulted by men they know and love each year in the United States. And the FBI reports that in 2006, 32-percent of female murder victims were killed by their husbands or boyfriends. Sister Of Silence takes a hard look at how many of these women end up in such tragic situations, by fearlessly exploring where one of these women came from, and showing how other women can be set free from their silence.

In this gripping memoir, Daleen lets readers take a candid look into her teenage years in Appalachia, where she grew up among the coal fields of West Virginia. Pregnant at sixteen and later married off to her unborn child’s father, by age twenty-one she was the mother to four small children–and suicidal.

It was then that Daleen was forced to make one of the most agonizing decisions of her young years–the only one that would save her life and preserve her sanity. For women who have faced these problems and prayed for a way out, or know a loved one who has–this book can help you.

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My next book, Guilt by Matrimony, about the murder of Aspen socialite, Nancy Pfister, comes out November 17. My memoir, Sister of Silence, is about surviving sexual violence, and how journalism helped free me; Cheatin’ Ain’t Easy, now in ebook format, is about the life of Preston County native, Eloise Morgan Milne; The Savage Murder of Skylar Neese (a New York Times bestseller, with coauthor Geoff Fuller) and Pretty Little Killers (also with Fuller), released July 8, 2014, and featured in the August 18 issue of People Magazine.

You can find these books either online or in print at a bookstore near you, at BenBella Books, Nellie Bly Books, Amazon, on iTunes and Barnes and Noble.

For an in-depth look at the damaging effects of the silence that surrounds abuse, please watch my live TEDx talk, given April 13, 2013, at Connecticut College.

Have a great day and remember, it’s whatever you want to make it!

~Daleen

Editor’s Note: Daleen Berry is a New York Times best-selling author and a recipient of the Pearl Buck Award in Writing for Social Change. She has won several other awards, for investigative journalism and her weekly newspaper columns, and her memoir, Sister of Silence, placed first in the West Virginia Writers’ Competition. Ms. Berry speaks about overcoming abuse through awareness, empowerment and goal attainment at conferences around the country. To read an excerpt of her memoir, please go to the Sister of Silence site. Check out the five-star review from ForeWord Reviews. Or find out why Kirkus Reviews called Ms. Berry “an engaging writer, her style fluid and easy to read, with welcome touches of humor and sustained tension throughout.”