It has been many years since Jo Dibblee was sexually assaulted as a teen by a Penticton man.
But that experience and those that followed, including the death of a young girl at the hands of the same man, have long haunted the Calgary author.
They are all recounted in her recently published memoirs, “Frock off, Living Undisguised.”
“It is my memoir, a glimpse into what my life was like from birth to 52 and what impacted me along the way,” she said.
As for the title, frock off, it’s a reference to a frock being like a suit of armour that someone could hide behind.
It is a term she has used since 2000 and the name for a corporation supporting non profits, whose focus is to help people who realized they don’t need to be defined by bad experiences.
The book, which she started writing in 2007, just came out on Nov. 1.
It was when she was 16, living in a dysfunctional home in Penticton, that she had her first encounter with Ernest Gardiner, the man who assaulted her, she said in a recent interview with Castanet.
Read the full interview at Old murder focus of new book
Author as a young girl.
In ‘Frock Off’ the book, s...
