Alligator In The Ocean: A Family's Fight to Stop a Serial Predator and Their Determination to Heal

by Anina Swan

Overview

Alligator in the Ocean illustrates one family’s drive to stop a serial predator and overcome the heart-wrenching struggles that followed.

Anina Swan shares the true account of how she survived the brutality of a serial predator, Ivan, unveiled traumatic amnesia, and rallied help to stop his crime spree. With deep-seated courage, Anina did the unthinkable when she confronted her perpetrator. The result eventually delivered Ivan’s confessions of assaulting hundreds of children, according to local news reports. The chaotic aftermath ultimately led to his arrest and how Anina transformed her pain into purpose and adversity into triumph.

In Alligator in the Ocean, Anina creatively weaves scenes from three different perspectives: one of the child victims, herself as a young mother, and the perpetrator through portions of his handwritten letters that he wrote to his wife, Adele, while incarcerated. Anina illustrates how the wounds of crime reach beyond the victim and spread through family and community. She gives a deeply personal account of how she persevered and overcame what seemed impossible. Then how she transformed—through forgiveness sought and found. This poignant story proves that where there is hope, the crippling effects of violence can be overcome and result in a profound desire to live a better life.

Alligator in the Ocean is a unique story based on a collection of Anina’s journals, court documents, slides and photos, newspaper articles, interviews, and the original letters written by Ivan to his wife while incarcerated.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781636986838
Publisher:	Morgan James Publishing
Publication date:	08/26/2025
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x (d)

About the Author

Anina Swan is a retired art teacher, child advocate, women’s advocate, author, blogger, and public speaker. Her professional background focused on teaching art as well as writing art curriculum for both private and public schools, kindergarten through twelfth grade. Anina attributes her passion to encourage children through after-school activities, coaching gymnastics, soccer, and skiing, teaching summer art programs as well as serving on staff at a children’s cancer camp, to her own traumatic experiences as a survivor of life-threatening childhood abuse and healing to thrive after crisis.

Anina currently speaks and advocates for women victims of crime at women’s conferences and focus groups as well as maintains a blog and website that emerged from her memoir, for her Alligator in the Ocean followers, hosting discussions of critical issues such as crimes against children, child abuse, human trafficking, depression, guilt, and intrusive self-harm thoughts—all of which, she believes, can be overcome through healing and living a life of victory with the goal of being able to move forward in life.

Anina uses a pen name to protect the privacy and confidentiality of any and all victims associated with Ivan the Alligator during his forty-year crime spree.

Anina Studied at Concordia College in Portland and Chico State University. She serves as the chief operating officer of Anina Swan LLC, an advocacy group, which she manages along with her husband, to help children who are victims of crime and their families.

Editorial Reviews

"What makes this survivor account unique is the way in which Anina Swan has crafted her story to give the reader a glimpse into the rocky road that the journey towards healing from childhood trauma involves. Moving back and forth between child Alexandra’s accounts of events as she lived them, and adult Anina’s vivid descriptions of her attempts to retrieve these memories of her own past, allows the reader for themselves experience some of the confusion and angst that Anina faced when snatches of memory appeared in the course of months of therapy with their meaning alluding her. In my decades of counseling those who have gone through similar hells, the confusion, terror, disbelief, rage, shame, depression, physical symptoms and so on that Anina depicts, gives voice to the experience of countless other childhood trauma survivors.”-Heather Davediuk Gingrich, Ph.D. Director, Graduate Certificate of Trauma Therapy Toccoa Falls College Author of: Restoring the Shattered Self (for counselors/helpers), Shattered No More (for survivors), and co-editor/contributor to Treating Trauma in Christian Counseling.

From the Publisher