Have we got an extraordinary guest for you today and to be honest, unless this intro runs for the next hour all by itself, I am going to have to truncate the bio of this remarkable human being. I hope she will forgive me…

Professor Jessica Stern is one of the U.S’s foremost  experts on terrorism.  She served on President Clinton’s National Security Council Staff, as well as being an analyst at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.  Jessica has lectured at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, was the Super-terrorism Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; a National Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution Task Force on National Security & Law; a Fellow of the World Economic Forum; a Harvard MacArthur Fellow & a faculty affiliate of the Belfer Center for Science & International Affairs. 

In 2001, Jessica was included among seven “thinkers” in Time Magazine’s series profiling 100 innovators.  

Today, Jessica is the Research Professor at Boston University’s Pardee School of Global Studies.  

But while Jessica’s career has indubitably reached stratospheric heights, her success hinges on her atypical post traumatic symptoms. You see, in October 1973, Jessica, then 15 and her sister Sara, aged 14, return from their weekly ballet lessons, when a strange man, armed with a gun enters their step mother’s home, in a safe neighbourhood in Massachusetts. 

Alone in the unlocked house, Jessica and Sara are brutally raped. 

The rapist is never caught & for over thirty years, Jessica denies the pain & the trauma of the assault & focuses on her career, instead of the terror. 

In her extraordinary memoir Denial: A Memoir of Terror - selected by the Washington Post as a best book of the year; Jessica courageously investigates her own unsolved adolescent sexual assault at the hands of a serial rapist, & in doing so, examines the cost of trauma & denial – her own & everyone else’s around her.

Please note that this incredibly powerful & important episode of Brave Journeys talks graphically about sexual abuse & isn’t remotely suitable for little ears.

If anything you hear during this episode is triggering in any way, please reach out to someone who can help keep you safe.  And please remember if you’re in Australia, you can phone Lifeline at any time on 13 11 14.

BUT BEFORE YOU GO…

Find out more about Jessica here

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Purchase remarkable Jessica’s Books here 

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CREDITS:

Creator, Host & Executive Producer: Tammi Faraday

With thanks to my special guest: Professor Jessica Stern

Audio Editor: Zoltan Fecso

With very special thanks to George Weinberg & Ursula Ferguson

BRAVE JOURNEYS acknowle