TORN From the Inside Out & THE JOURNEY

 MEMOIRS

In 1973,  a young woman, barely sixteen years old, and a zealous member of a cultist religious group, married a twenty-three year-old man, also a member of a the same religious group:

Fifteen years of abuse and five children later, Sara Niles fled for her life, crossed three state lines, and finally landed in a Safe Port. The Journey is the story of the Niles Family, especially the Children who grew up in a violent and traumatic environment. 

TORN From the Inside Out tells the story of Sara Nile's abuse and eventual escape. The Journey is the rest of the story.

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Torn From the Inside Out

Born from Trauma: 'A Pain so Great as to Tear the Soul Inside Out'

On a sunny day in 1960, a white haired, eighty-year-old man, walked up a steep hill deep in the countryside of Southern Arkansas, and walked away with a three- and one-half year old, little dirty girl-child, riding high atop his shoulders, holding tightly onto the old man’s bald head. The little girl was scared, hungry, as always, and she had no idea of the home she was going to. The little girl had been given away by her biological mother to an elderly Great-uncle, the brother of her maternal grandmother. That little girl was Me, Sara Niles. I lived a fairytale life on 'the Flower Bed of Eden', at least, that is how it all began.

Fast Forward

February 13, 1987

"I am going to kill you DEAD!', screamed my husband and father of my five children, Thomas Niles, as I flew down the stairs of the townhouse, two steps at a time, running for my life. Domestic Violence homicide had taken the lives of two local acquaintances that I knew well, only a few years earlier, as both were murdered by their long-time husbands, each much like mine. I was about to suffer the same fate. I was going to die that night, I knew it, as the thunder storm raged outside, a worse storm raged inside.

It was the storms inside that night that I feared.

Every life carries a tale, a backstory of origins, choices, successes, and failures; for a life is no small thing to live, some lives are smooth like paved roads, while others are bumpy and fraught with danger. An unconventional life, one without the prerequisite cushions of predictability and stability, is especially fraught with dangers, as was mine. The dire straits created by unforeseeable events and circumstances, just as the biblical verse states: “Time and unforeseen occurrences befall them all”, befell me more times than I could count. I lived a dangerous life with a dangerous man.

From the Garden of Eden straight into 'Hell'

In 1973, Sara married Thomas Niles, which negatively altered the outcome of Sara Nile's life. Saved from trauma as a child, nurtured, and trained in sound moral principles by loving relatives, nothing prepared Sara for life with Thomas Niles.

The Fairy-tale wedding in a Jehovah's Witness Kingdom hall packed to the four walls, soon became a prolonged nightmare in which the hopes and dreams of a talented child, were singularly shelved in favor of survival. The Storm that ignited as an innocent marriage before man and God, would last awhile, because unbeknown to Sara, she had married a monster in disguise.

I am a different Sara Niles, than the young girl of my long-gone youth; I have the insight young Sara never had, and I am much wiser and stronger than the infatuated young girl that I once was. I will be your narrator as you journey with me across time and space, back to where it all began.

The JOURNEY (411 pages)

Forty Years in the 'Wilderness' of shame and denial that shrouds the The-headed Monster in secrecy; denying the truth of what you see with your own eyes, and the emotions you feel in your heart, is tantamount to self-murder. Most people who survive abuse and carry its wounds and scars, never speak of it openly, therefore, they carry wounds that never heal.

 

The life the Niles family lived after fleeing abuse began as a quest for freedom, but issues, and ingrained hurts incurred during the long nightmare living with Thomas Niles, continued to appear at dubious times, in  ways that could not be ignored.

It is estimated that up to seventy percent of people in the world have suffered some degree of family dysfunction, yet people rarely speak of it. Secrecy and denial aid in the perpetuation of dysfunction, The Journey tells the stark truth-sometimes leaving in only a new beginning.

How It All Began:

We left our whole world behind, and fled with nothing, yet the children never even once asked Why?"
When a Raging Fire strikes a home in the middle of the night, everyone flees the home, with no regard for possessions, no grabbing of personal belongings, because every second counts. In most cases, there are family and friends, co-workers, and others standing by to help.
In 1987, we fled from a different type of 'Fire', a would-be killer who promised to erase us from the earth. The Niles Family would embark on a lifelong Journey of Reparation and searches for Resolution.

Torn From the Inside Out: abuse knows no bounds

Canada Torn From the Inside Out

During a cold, February thunderstorm, in the dark of night, Sara Niles fled for her life with her five children in tow, forced to disappear in order to stay alive.

Torn From the Inside Out is a true story of extreme domestic violence and family dysfunction that begins with the heroic intervention of an 83 year-old uncle, when Sara Niles was a 3 1/2 year-old child, living in a perilous climate. 

Sara’s great-great Uncle Robert saves her, and takes her home to live on a beautiful, paradisiac farm to live with he, and his childless wife, Sara’s Aunt Molly.
Set in the Rural South during a time of racial conflict, Sara begins her life racially mixed, half White and half Black, during the late 1950’s. The story fast forwards, as the wonderful life provided by Sara's aged uncle and aunt falls apart, leaving Sara vulnerable to the advances of Vietnam Veteran Thomas Niles, whom she marries when only sixteen years old. Niles is a violent and abusive man, given to sudden rages and fits of mood that were entirely foreign to Sara.

True to Sara’s optimistic spirit, Sara attempts to help Thomas Niles conquer his demons, while hoping and wishing for better times, and enduring abuse, Sara eventually comes to the realization Thomas Niles is a killer, who promises to kill her and ‘every one of those children’, if she tried to leave him.

Torn From the Inside Out probes the depth of human behavior to the root of existence, as it emotionally traverses the soil of our hearts and souls. Human relationships from early childhood through adulthood, color our views of selves and the world around us. Our pasts are what make us what we are. It is the pain that is experienced through earlier life that makes us wise in hindsight; illuminating the past with new light. It is through the lens of life that Sara tells her story:

“In the process of my evolution, I became a victim of domestic war, an emotional casualty for a major portion of my life, entwined, entrapped and emotionally involved, until I learned how to become free. Freedom has never been easily gained and has often come at high cost throughout history, but one thing I will always know is freedom is worth every fight, and all pain.” 

Sara Niles from Torn From the Inside Out

Homicide In the Street by Sara Niles

Nonfiction 

Essay-length short story 4558 words 

One Full chapter from Out of the Maelstrom

Sara Niles fled for her life with her five children in 1987, as a victim homicidal domestic violence from her deranged husband; over a decade later, Niles begins work with a nonprofit domestic violence agency, dealing directly with victims of crime and violence. 
Homicide in the Street is the story of one of the most notorious of the abusers whose murder happened in the street in front of her adult son's home. It is through the telling of this story that the sad outcome of extreme violence is brought to the fore through the lens of society and the cultural mores of the times. 

Excerpt from Chapter of Out of the Maelstrom by Sara Niles

He was dead, alright. The sight of death is an ugly and fearsome thing I thought, as I absorbed the tragic sight in front of me. It was a man, ‘The man’ , who was lying in the road with blackish-red blood pooled around his head, and as he lay face down with his feet in his own yard, while his head and shoulders were planted in the street, giving the appearance of a killed animal felled in its tracks by a hunter.

By the time I arrived, yellow crime scene tape was strapped around the trees, while blue and red lights flashed out of sync with each other, providing the warning surges of light emanating from the tops of police cars and through the windshields of undercover detective vehicles; while the ambulance was parked askew with the neat, uniformed workers eerily standing almost idly by, in no apparent rush to ‘save’ the life of the already ‘dead’ man. I had rushed over as soon as I got the phone call, alerting me to what I was seeing with my own eyes. The phone call had been from my oldest son Tommy, who had reached me at the local domestic violence shelter with the news: “He’s dead! Mama-somebody just shot him-right out in the middle of the street!” 

Tommy had tersely stated, as a matter-of -fact summation of a wasted and dangerous life. The man was killed within fifty feet of my adult son Tommy’s yard, so naturally I felt I had a license to investigate, to see if he was indeed ‘really’ dead.

Read Homicide in the Street on Amazon

Torn From the Inside Out Sara Niles

“In every life there is a timeless and unforgettable minute or day that will be forever etched into our mind’s memory. I have unforgettable memories that are so vivid that I see them in Technicolor, and I hear them in surround sound”