Editor’s note: Hera McLeod announces her new book, “Defying Silence: A Memoir of a Mother’s Loss and Courage in the Face of Injustice,” about the murder of her young son by his father. She previously contributed to Lovefraud under the name, “Cappuccino Queen,” as she was in the midst of her concerns about the safety of her son. Read her articles here.
By Hera McLeod
Two weeks after giving birth to my son Prince, I discovered that everything I knew about my son’s father was a lie. After a 12-month custody battle, full of terrifying evidence that I uncovered, Prince’s father murdered him during the fourth unsupervised visitation.
Parts of my son’s case have been reported about in the media over the last decade, but on December 10th I finally published my story that I’ve been desperate to release into the world for over a decade. Defying Silence: A Memoir of a Mother’s Loss and Courage in the Face of Injustice takes readers through my experience as the romantic target of a serial killer. It also highlights the deep fractures in the American justice system that routinely leaves women and children vulnerable. It will arm you with the knowledge necessary to join the fight, ideas for reform, and the inspiration to speak out against the silence.
Though my son’s father has since been arrested and is serving a life sentence in prison, I’ve had this unsettling feeling that full justice wasn’t served. For me, full justice can only happen when the same trauma/tragedy wouldn’t happen again — with the same variables and circumstances. I wrote this book to validate survivors — as the book I wish I’d had while I was going through a trauma deeper than I could’ve imagined. But I also wrote this book in the hope of spurring a national conversation on the state and federal level about systemic reforms required to protect children.
It took me a whole decade to finally publish this book, because telling my story required me to walk through some pretty deep trauma. And I knew that I couldn’t tell the story authentically and honestly without allowing myself time to process the trauma and gain necessary perspective. I couldn’t do the story or my son justice by giving myself a pass for my own mistakes or glossing over scenes because I hadn’t fully done the work on myself. I wanted to tell a vulnerable, raw, and completely truthful story from my perspective.
You can find links to the ebook and print version of my book on my website: https://heramcleod.com/books/defying-silence/
Or directly on Amazon: https://a.co/d/8iWk6Tz
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