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If I was condemned to live as long as God, I'd never forget it. |
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Ken Kesey’s book, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, was a fictional account of abuses in a state mental hospital, while my book HARD CANDY: Nobody Ever Flies Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, is the true story. HARD CANDY spotlights a hard look into the bleak world of secretive bureaucracies that continue to maintain its operations just short of the Stone Age of insanity. HARD CANDY is the book they never wanted written.
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Book Description From the Back Cover Charles Carroll and his brother, Bobby, had the misfortune of being hard-to-place foster children and New Jersey in the 1950s. So the "powers that be" simply reclassified them from "orphan" to "retarded" and exiled them to a state-mental institution. There they remained for nearly ten years, deprived of their civil liberties, devoid of their right to an education, and denied any semblance of a humane existence. Beneath the sanitized facade of the institution's administrative offices and visiting rooms were cramped dormitories and dank basement hellholes. Lazy and inept personnel foisted off supervision of these children to ruthless monitors-children themselves-who maintained order through methods so sadistic and horrific that "child abuse" seems a chillingly inadequate label. Charles was a victim of an uncaring, ignorant, and underfunded system-one that was kept just out of the view of polite society. But the differentiating aspect of Charles's incarceration in this "nuthouse" is the ironic, cosmic hook in this story: he was not nuts. He was, in fact, a sensitive and perceptive child with a high IQ. Moreover, Charles was consciously and painfully aware of every moment of his own abuse as well as the torment of his mentally defective fellow patients. Enduring their collective plight and clinging to his sanity, as one would a tiny glimmer of hope, he vowed to one day write this remarkable story of survival-not for his sake, but for the sake of society's outcasts and those too helpless to help themselves, then and now.
BESTSELLER In Canada, on September. 18, '2006, HARD CANDY made #1 on the Amazon bestseller list for the genre, Family & Childhood. In the U.S. on February 1, 2008, the book took #3 on the Amazon bestseller list for the genre, Memoir/Biography. On October 20, 2008, the book made #2 on the Amazon bestseller list for the genre, Dysfunctional Relationships, and on October 23, 2009, HARD CANDY made the Amazon bestseller list for the genre, Child Abuse. Then, on June 28, 2010 (a rare occurrence), the book made it on three Amazon bestseller lists in genres listed above. SPECIAL NOTE: These bestseller lists are the avenues by which "better books" sometimes make it to the national bestseller list.
Mr. Carroll... I fully share your view that awareness and education are essential to child abuse prevention... and I do wish you every success with your project. —Henry Waxman
Mr. Carroll... It's evident that you are committed to standing up in the face of injustice--may you continue with that depth of commitment in your writing and all that you do. —Elie Wiesel Recipient of the Congressional Medal of Honor Nobel Prize Winner Author of More Than 40 books
HARD CANDY is important and brave, comprehensive, real, and ever so true. It opens us to the real culprits of sexual abuse—the people, the secular authorities, to whom we've entrusted our children. It talks about who does it, how it happens, why it happens, how to recognize it, and what to do. Charles A. Carroll opens the doors on our society's most hidden plague, the sexual abuse of boys.
—Chuck Rosenthal Author of the book: Never Let Me Go: A Portrait of Sexual Predation
There is one thing wrong with this book! If I were the publisher of this book, I would have insisted on titling it A Terrible, Terrible Crime or some other terribly dramatic title so that it would better attract the morbid curiosity of the mass reading public, become a bestseller and help end a terrible crime. This book deserves to be a bestseller! —Art Kunkin Founder, Publisher and Editor Los Angeles Free Press
The story Carroll tells will read like wild fiction to some readers. But I can attest that the Hell he describes is no exaggeration. My mother worked at state mental hospitals in Michigan in the 1980s and 1990s. I worked in private care, lasting all of three months. As an attorney, I represented several private psychiatric hospitals, orphanages, and child care facilities, public and private, in sex abuse and wrongful death cases. I learned what "positional asphyxia" can do to the body of a child, and how hard it is to find a resident who has wandered away before he freezes. Much of it I'm bound by privilege not to repeat. But I've seen enough to know that Carroll's story is true. http://laurajames.typepad.com/clews/2006/11/ —Laura James, Esq. Crime Historian/Porprietor of Clews Writes a blog on crime and its history Author of the book: The Love Pirate and the Bandits Son
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WHY I WROTE THE BOOK
When I set out to write the book I wanted to believe in the system. I wanted to believe things had changed, and I wanted to believe in the public myth that is doesn’t happen anymore, and had I learned it was otherwise, I would not have written this book, because with my story alone, the reader would simply come way thinking, oh, well, that was more than 40 years ago, it doesn’t happen anymore. Ladies and gentlemen, the evidence is clear, the atrocities are current, ongoing, and tragically appalling -- and this was the elixir that injected iron into my backbone and sulfur into my blood, to not only write my book, but to also be a voice for those victims who, today, are still trembling behind closed doors awaiting redemption from their abusive reign of hell. |
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HARD CANDY is a human portrayal of an uncommon nature. No one thing contributes more to its value than its authenticity, but be forewarned, you will not find literary frills, polite language, soft corners of prose, soothing seams of dialogue, happy jingles, or joyful songs. You will find, however, a thread of love that weaves together the entire story—a story about a special devotion shared between my brother and me and how we cared for each other when no one else would, how we understood each other when no one else did, and how we desperately clung to the needed components of love and friendship to survive—together—the horrific reality.
HARD CANDY will give you a glimpse into the bleak world of institutional “bad guys”—administrators, civil servant caretakers and resident monitors that stood side by side with idiots and madmen who deliberately committed atrocities against these children, causing many to flee into an unconventional brand of protection, which was a futile attempt to gain some semblance of refuge because there was no legitimate protection for them. After suffering a decade of abuse, I was finally released from the mental institution baring the scars from having been denied my civil liberties, a right to an education which left with barely a second grade education, and any semblance of a humane existence.
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Adapted to the screen from the book is a screenplay titled A STATE WARD’S REBELLION Contact the author: Hardcandy.2@netzero.com |
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Ready to buy a signed copy of the book from the author? Please go to the bottom of the page. |
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Charles A. Carroll Nevertheless, I managed to succeed against horrific odds, eventually entering adult night classes at Hollywood High School in Los Angeles where I earned a diploma in less than two years, but wanting to make better sense of the social system, I transferred to Los Angeles City College and, there, at the age of 27, I earned an Associate’s Degree in Sociology, but I was still not satisfied. I transferred to California State University on Los Angeles and spent another two years there, finally leaving college and opening a successful electrical contracting business in Hollywood, California, and subsisted on that business for the next 25 years, but not without living without the tormenting screams of yesteryear’s children still trapped within the walls of my soul and memory, forever begging that I one day redeem them. Finally in 1989, I heeded their calling. I closed my business and began a six-year journey investigating places like New Lisbon Developmental Center and others like it across the country only to learn that little had changed from the time my brother and I were committed to such places. And that's when set out to write HARD CANDY with the hope of making a profound difference.
This is not just a true story of yesteryear. HARD CANDY also dispels the myth that it doesn’t happen anymore. Read all about the current U.S. Justice Department investigations in the appendices of the book to find out what they uncovered behind closed doors. You won’t believe their findings. |
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DISTINGUISHED KUDOS |
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THE BROTHERS |
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Charles A. Carroll / Robert L. Carroll |
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Robert L. Carroll |
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Charles A. Carroll |
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Charles A. Carroll / Robert L. Carroll |
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...AND YES, THERE IS A SCREENPLAY |
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HARD CANDY won the 2005 MIPA Book Award, receiving Honorable Mention for Memoir/Biography from the Midwest Independent Publishers Association. http://www.mipa.org/awards.html |
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HARD CANDY won the 2006 Hollywood Book Festival Award, receiving Honorable Mention for Biography/Autobiography for greater recognition from the film and television communities--literature worth further consideration for the screen. http://www.diyreporter.com/news/news2.asp?news2_id =373 http://www.hollywoodbookfestival.com/ |
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MUSIC: Richard Burmer—Across the View |