My friends and I have a tradition ? every year we give each other presents to a value of about $50.00, but we don’t tell each other who it’s from ? even years later. One year, there were five of us, plus five boyfriends, in the Kris Kringle draw. When I got my best friend […]

My husband Don and I had been married for almost 10 years when our relationship and our lives were changed irrevocably. We married young — I was only 18 and Don was 19 when we tied the knot. We were very much in love — more with the idea of being in love than each […]

I married young, and unfortunately realised too late that I had married the wrong person. My husband, who had been sweet and kind while we were going out, didn’t seem to want a wife; he wanted a slave! And every day, that’s what I felt I had become. The more I did for Ray, the […]

Greedy for reward money, Karen Matthews hatched to plot to kidnap her little girl, then made tearful TV appeals for her return. The chilling story of a British mother who faked her own daughter’s kidnapping to claim the reward money has shocked the world. Karen Matthews, 33, was arrested nearly a month after her child […]

At just 18, Tiffany Upton’s life took a horror turn in a work accident that almost robbed her of both arms, but the brave Queenslander has handled her ordeal with amazing strength and optimism… All Tiffany Upton wants for Christmas is to put her arms around her family ? a simple wish she will have […]

For 13 years, since Sydney model Caroline Byrne was found dead beneath the cliffs at The Gap, her family never doubted who killed her. Now Caroline’s father Tony tells of his unwavering conviction that her tragic death hid a darker secret… Tony Byrne’s eyes glisten as he gazes out over wind-blown cliffs to a rolling […]

When Australian mum June Rose-Claire tried to leave extremist sect the Exclusive Brethren she lost everything ? including her two sons. June Rose-Claire was a carefree, laugh-a-minute kind of girl. Then she made the innocent mistake of falling in love. The man she fell head over heels for was a churchgoer ? so naturally June […]

Ever since I was a little boy I knew I was gay. Being attracted to other boys at school felt like the most normal thing in the world to me, but I always knew it was something that had to be kept a secret, that my family wouldn’t understand. My parents were strict Christians. And […]

By Jenny Brown Pictures: Gina Milicia. Hair and make-up: Julian Jones. Held captive, beaten and raped for 11 days, Yvonne Bornstein has now turned her horrific story into one of inspiration. Abducted and imprisoned in a filthy, freezing cellar near Moscow, mother-of-two Yvonne Bornstein believed she was about to die. She could taste, smell, feel […]

I met June at a time when I was a young man who was trying to “sow his wild oats” as much as possible — which is to say, I didn’t think I wanted to settle down any time soon. June worked in administration at a foreign embassy. While she was a shy sort of […]