Little Chicago is a 2002 novel by Adam Rapp

Adam Rapp

Adam Rapp is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, musician and film director. His play Red Light Winter was a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2006.-Early life:...

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Little Chicago is a story told by eleven-year-old Gerald 'Blacky' Brown, a victim of sexual abuse

Child sexual abuse

Child sexual abuse is a form of child abuse in which an adult or older adolescent uses a child for sexual stimulation. Forms of child sexual abuse include asking or pressuring a child to engage in sexual activities , indecent exposure with intent to gratify their own sexual desires or to...

 and neglect. Blacky is taken to hospital to be examined, tells a social worker about the molestation, and at school he tells his best (and only) friend, Eric Duggan.

But he is let down by the other characters. Blacky's mother wants to keep seeing her boyfriend; his sister has a serious drug problem; Wendy Wolf, the woman from the Children's Service, does not follow up on the allegations; and Blacky suffers associated bullying at school.

Blacky befriends Mary Jane Paddington, a lonely and very unpopular girl at school, and she encourages Blacky to resist the bullying, but she becomes the victim of a brutal prank. The girl’s friendship helped him, but he still suffers the cruelty at school and neglect at home. Eventually Blacky acquires a gun and two bullets and confronts two of the bullies.

Rapp, through the observations of the young boy, shows the terror, bewilderment, and behaviour changes that can result from child molestation

Pedophilia

As a medical diagnosis, pedophilia is defined as a psychiatric disorder in adults or late adolescents typically characterized by a primary or exclusive sexual interest in prepubescent children...

if adults ignore it.