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They say, in a place like Los Angeles, sheltering a street kid is a bad idea. But if he is all that kid’s got left – can he refuse? *** 18-year-old Scott Wilson never had to face the dark side of life. Until now, he has been a carefree boy enjoying the first days of his summer break with his friends at a Southern Californian beach, with nothing on his mind but surfing, fun and the excitement of his upcoming college life. But then Scott watches what looks like the suicide attempt of a young street girl, and it shatters the façade of his shielded life. Saving her from drowning when no one else seems to bother, shocked and unable to cope with the idea of suicide, he feels compelled to help the girl. So he lies to the life guards about what he has seen, lies to the hospital staff and the social worker, and manages to take the tranquilized girl home. But only there does he realise that something is more than terribly wrong. There are scars on her body. She is ridden by fear and distrust. And every night, she wakes screaming from her nightmares. Scott is disturbed, but determined to not give her up. As a fragile relationship grows between the two very different teenagers, it gradually dawns on him what might have happened to her. And eventually he learns the whole shocking truth about her. With Elaine, he encounters a sinister world of violence, incest, abuse, deprivation and fear, and it changes not only his outlook on the world, on life, but the core of his self. As he falls in love with Elaine, he finds that it means not only facing the end of the life he knows, but also that he has to accept the demons she battles as his own. The Sins of the Father (working title) is not only a brutally honest account of the devastating effects of child abuse on the soul of a young girl and her relationships, but it is a powerful, haunting and heart wrenching appeal to compassion and the responsibility humans share for one another.
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