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Child Sexual Abuse Quotes

Browse 273 quotes about Child Sexual Abuse.

Child Sexual Abuse Quotes

“To hold traumatic reality in consciousness requires a social context that affirms and protects the victim and that joins the victim and witness in a common alliance. For the individual victim, this social context is created by relationships with friends, lovers, and family. For the larger society, the social context is created by political movements that give voice to the disempowered.”

AbuseVictimTraumaWitnessPtsdSexual AbuseChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsSociety DenialPerpetrator
Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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“The unconscious mind always operates in the present tense, and when a memory is buried in the unconscious, the unconscious preserves it as an ongoing act of abuse in the present of the unconscious mind. The cost of repressing a memory is that the mind does not know the abuse ended.”

HealingAbuseChild AbuseSubconsciousSexual AbuseChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsHealing InsightsUnconscious MindRepressed MemoriesDissociative AmnesiaHealing From AbuseRecovery From AbuseHealing AbuseTrauma MemoryDissociated
Book:Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
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“When there is inconsistency in belief and action (such as being violated by someone who is supposed to love you) our mind has to make an adjustment so that thought and action are aligned. So sometimes the adjustment that the mind makes is for the victim to bring her or his behavior in line with the violator, since the violator cannot be controlled by the victim. Our greatest source of survival is to adapt to our environment. So increasing emotional intimacy with a person who is forcing physical intimacy makes sense in our minds. It resolves cognitive dissonance.”

HealingSurvivalVictimDomestic ViolenceSexual AbuseRapeViolationChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsIncestHealing InsightsSexual ViolenceCognitive DissonanceHealing From AbuseChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorRecovery From AbuseStockholm SyndromeEmotional IntimacyTrauma BondingSexual Abuse Of A Child
Book:Tree Leaves: Breaking The Fall Of The Loud Silence
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“Power is confusing for us, perhaps even terrifying, because our relationship with it had an unfortunate beginning. Someone in a position of power over us used and abused us…It seems as if power were something to be wielded, always at someone’s expense, usually our own.”

HealingPowerAbuseSurvivorChild AbusePowerlessChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsPowerlessnessAbuse Of PowerChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorMisuse Of PowerParental AuthoritySurvivor Of AbuseAbuse Of AuthorityAbusive ParentingAbuse Of Trust
Book:Beyond Survival: A Writing Journey for Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse
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“In order to survive our youth, many of us became sensitized to which conditions we had to play to, to receive attention. No wonder we mistook this attention for love. We thought love came in finite quantities—it had to be competed for among siblings, or it had to be paid for with exacting dues.”

HealingSurvivorChild AbuseEmotional AbuseChild Sexual AbuseCompetitivenessHealing InsightsUnlovedChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorChild Abuse SurvivorEmotional NeglectConditional LoveParental NeglectSurvival Mechanism
Author:Maureen Brady
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“Since most sexual abuse begins well before puberty, preventive education, if it is to have any effect at all, should begin early in grade school. Ideally, information on sexual abuse should be integrated into a general curriculum of sex education. In those communities where the experiment has been tried, it has been shown conclusively that children can learn what they most need to know about sexual abuse, without becoming unduly frightened or developing generally negative sexual attitudes. In Minneapolis, Minnesota, for example, the Hennepin County Attorney's office developed an education program on sexual assault for elementary school children. The program was presented to all age groups in four different schools, some eight hundred children in all. The presentation opened with a performance by a children’s theater group, illustrating the difference between affectionate touching, and exploitative touching. The children’s responses to the skits indicated that they understood the distinction very well indeed. Following the presentation, about one child in six disclosed a sexual experience with an adult, ranging from an encounter with an exhibitionist to involvement in incest. Most of the children, both boys and girls, had not told anyone prior to the classroom discussion. In addition to basic information on sexual relations and sexual assault, children need to know that they have the right to their own bodily integity.”

Sexual AbuseRapeChild Sexual AbuseSexual AssaultIncestRape CultureSex EducationChild RapeChild Sexual Abuse PreventionRape PreventionSexual Abuse PreventionSexual Violance
Book:Father-Daughter Incest
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“You may experience waves of disbelief after each memory you retrieve. Whether as a phase or waves, the disbelief is usually accompanied by massive self-hate and guilt. ‘How can I even think such a thing? I must really be warped,’ you tell yourself.”

Child AbuseDisbeliefDissociationChild Sexual AbuseIncestSelf DoubtRepressed MemoriesDissociative AmnesiaChild Abuse SurvivorRecovered MemoriesTrauma MemoryDissociated
Book:Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
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“Society gives the image of sexual violators as weird, ugly, anti-social, alcoholics. Society gives the impression that violators kidnap children are out of their homes and take them to some wooded area and abandon them after the violation. Society gives the impression that everyone hates people who violate children. If all of these myths were true, healing would not be as challenging as it is. Half of our healing is about the actual abuse. The other half is about how survivors fit into society in the face of the myths that people hold in order to make themselves feel safe. The truth is that 80% of childhood sexual abuse is perpetrated by family members. Yet we rarely hear the word “incest”. The word is too ugly and the truth is too scary. Think about what would happen if we ran a campaign to end incest instead of childhood sexual abuse. The number one place that children should know they are safe is in their homes. As it stands, as long as violators keep sexual abuse within the family, the chances of repercussion by anyone is pretty low. Wives won’t leave violating husbands, mothers won’t kick their violating children out of the home, and violating grandparents still get invited to holiday dinners. It is time to start cleaning house. If we stop incest first, then we will strengthen our cause against all sexual abuse.”

HealingSocietyAbuseDenialViolationChild Sexual AbuseSurvivorsMythsIncestHealing InsightsSociety DenialDysfunctional FamiliesChild RapeClean HouseHealing From AbuseRecovery From AbusePedophile ProtectorsPedophile Protector
Author:Rosenna Bakari
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“Though all the daughters eventually succeeded in escaping from their families, they felt, even at this time of the interview (while in their 20s and 30s) that they would never be safe with their fathers, and that they would have to defend themselves as long as their fathers lived.”

FearSexual AbuseChild Sexual AbuseIncestDysfunctional FamilyChild RapeChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorAbusive MenAbusive FatherAbusive Parent
Book:Father-Daughter Incest
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“My mom called Grandma today and told her we would no longer be attending family parties. My mom told her we have had enough of being blamed for something Brian did and everyone brushing it off like it was no big deal.”

BlameDenialChild AbuseChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsIncestAssertivenessDysfunctional FamilyChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorFamily ConflictPedophile Protector
Book:Stolen Innocence: Triumphing Over a Childhood Broken by Abuse: A Memoir
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“If someone would have talked in school about safe touch and unsafe touch, I believe I would have spoken up as a child and not been victimized over and over again for years, but that day never came, which is why my mission now is to protect children from the childhood I could not be protected from.”

EducationChild AbuseChild Sexual AbuseChildhood Sexual AbuseRevictimisationChild Abuse Prevention
Book:An Unimaginable Act: Overcoming and Preventing Child Abuse Through Erin's Law
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“When I first started to remember specific memories of abuse, I felt like I had a storm cloud over me for about two or three days beforehand. When the memory finally surfaced, I felt like I was alone in a dark cave. I stayed in bed just thinking and crying and eating chocolate. I wrote in my healing journal and talked it out with a friend. I examined what I thought and how I felt and cried some more. It was agonizing. The more issues I faced, the stronger I got. It wasn’t a pleasant process, but I knew it would be over in a few days and I would feel alive again. With each memory, I recovered faster and I had longer and longer breaks in between them. Facing them made me stronger. I was able to see more and more of the truth without it overwhelming me. Even though the memories increased in intensity, it was easier to deal with them.”

Child Sexual AbuseSurvivorsIncestTraumatic ExperiencesRepressed MemoriesAbuse SurvivorRecovered MemoriesFlashbacks
Book:The Rescued Soul: The Writing Journey for the Healing of Incest and Family Betrayal
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“The bridge out of shame is outrage. Suddenly the obvious becomes stunningly clear—we have been carrying shame for the crime of the offender…In a clear flash we may see ourselves standing in a fierce stance, grounded by our knowledge, ready to throw off any wrongdoer. Our outrage can be a fueling energy, capable of making us as steely as we need to be.”

HealingCrimeShameRageRecoveryRapeOutrageChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsIncestHealing InsightsChild RapeHealing From AbuseRecovery From Abuse
Book:Beyond Survival: A Writing Journey for Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse
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“Incest does not occur in a vacuum... Needless to say, incest is not a function of a healthy home. It is important to note that it is not known how much of the traumatic stress reaction or emotional disturbance is caused by the sexual act of incest and how much is caused by the unhealthy, emotionally deprived, neglect-filled home environment that fosters incestuous activity.”

Child Sexual AbuseIncestDysfunctional FamilyDysfunctional FamiliesAbuse Survivor
Book:Counseling Survivors of Sexual Abuse
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“There’s a painful, uncanny irony that, in the name of familial love and loyalty, child sexual abuse survivors are overtly and covertly encouraged to remain silent. Family members and other caregivers will go to great lengths to deny, discredit, muzzle, medicate, or institutionalize the silence breakers. This must change. We need models of “love with accountability.”

FamilyChild Sexual AbuseBelieve SurvivorsLove With Accountability
Book:Love WITH Accountability: Digging up the Roots of Child Sexual Abuse
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“I pass the torch to the monster, the beast, the phantasm, Red Buttons who lurks behind the eyes of the pedophile priest. You just continue raping the children. Softening their flesh with fear. I'll stop by once in a while. See if, I don't know, they are tired of "IT" and want to come with me, where they'll make a delicious addition to my carpet of bones.”

BooksHorrorMonstersChild Sexual AbuseTrue StoryChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorRedbuttonsStephen King S ItThe Confessional
Book:The Confessional
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“[Former Bishop of Ballarat Ronald] Mulkearns appealed to Pope John Paul II about what to do about child sexual abuse - he wanted, says [Former Corpus Christi seminarian Michael] Costigan, 'some direction or counselling'. 'He said the Pope would not talk to him about it', Costigan says. 'He said the Pope turned his back and walked out of the room.' ... 'It wasn't long after he came back that he stood down as Bishop.' (p.189)”

Child Sexual AbusePope John Paul IiAd LiminaBishop Ronald MulkearnsPapal Audience
Book:Cardinal: The Rise and Fall of George Pell
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“Anna O.'s real name was Bertha Pappenheim. Bertha Pappenheim became one of the first social workers in Europe. Her work was recognized in a commemorative German stamp issued in 1954. She was also an early feminist. Her work involved the establishing of homes for prostitutes and unwed mothers. It is possible that, and psychoanalytic terms, this career was on undoing of her own childhood sexual trauma and of the failure of any person in authority to validate its reality or offer comfort.”

FeministDissociative Identity DisorderChild Sexual AbuseSocial WorkerUndoingFamous WomanBertha Pappenheim
Book:Dissociative Identity Disorder: Diagnosis, Clinical Features, and Treatment of Multiple Personality
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“We also need to recognise that denial is used by abusers to protect themselves. People who work with sexual offenders talk about a ‘triad of cognitive distortion’. This means that almost every abuser ‘thinks wrongly’ and this is a key area of work for treatment with sexual offenders. Basically they have three wrong thought patterns, and these are denial, minimisation and blame.”

DenialChild Sexual AbuseRape CulturePerpetratorsSociety DenialVictim BlamingRapistsSex Offenders
Author:Carolyn Spring
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“Recovery can take place only within then context of relationships; it cannot occur in isolation. In her renewed connection with other people, the survivor re-creates the psychological facilities that were damaged or deformed by the traumatic experience. These faculties include the basic operations of trust, autonomy, initiative, competence, identity, and intimacy. Just as these capabilities are formed in relationships with other people, they must be reformed in such relationships. The first principle of recovery is empowerment of the survivor. She must be the author and arbiter of her own recovery. Others may offer advice, support, assistance, affection, and care, but not cure. Many benevolent and well-intentioned attempts to assist the survivor founder because this basic principle of empowerment is not observed. No intervention that takes power away from the survivor can possibly foster her recovery, no matter how much it appears to be in her immediate best interest.”

RelationshipsHealingAbuseTraumaRecoveryIsolationSurvivorPtsdSexual AbuseRapeChild Sexual AbuseHealthy RelationshipsComplex PtsdComplex Trauma
Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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“The mental health system is filled with survivors of prolonged, repeated childhood trauma. This is true even though most people who have been abused in childhood never come to psychiatric attention. To the extent that these people recover, they do so on their own.[21] While only a small minority of survivors, usually those with the most severe abuse histories, eventually become psychiatric patients, many or even most psychiatric patients are survivors of childhood abuse.[22] The data on this point are beyond contention. On careful questioning, 50-60 percent of psychiatric inpatients and 40-60 percent of outpatients report childhood histories of physical or sexual abuse or both.[23] In one study of psychiatric emergency room patients, 70 percent had abuse histories.[24] Thus abuse in childhood appears to be one of the main factors that lead a person to seek psychiatric treatment as an adult.[25]”

Mental HealthChild AbusePsychiatryChild Sexual AbusePsychotherapySurvivorsChildhood TraumaPhysical AbuseSurvivors Of AbuseMental Health SystemMetal Illness
Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence--From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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“Life has an uncanny way of tying up a host of loose ends. Not in the neat, all-creases-matching, hospital corner-to-corner kind of way, but in a cloudy, murky, uncertain mish-mash collection of what ifs, could haves, and a bus load of should haves kind of way. But what happens when all the magnificent stars in the heavens and all the resolute planets in the galaxy agree to simultaneously align? What happens when the glorious birds of prey in the sky and the steadfast worker ants of the ground all decide to ally? And more intriguingly, what happens when the settling of old hurts and scores becomes so alluring, so certain, with the whispered promise of everlasting, as to lure with it a collection of hardly surviving, barely functioning, scattered, and damaged souls together once again? As one door finally seemed to close tightly shut, two others flung wide open, and the darkness of life’s most protected secrets and haunts invited the crippling unknown to bask once again in the glaring, naked light.”

SurvivorChild Sexual AbuseIncest
Book:As One Door Closes
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“To take a specific example, a researcher in the Journal of Traumatic Stress interviewed 129 women with documented histories of child sexual abuse that occurred between the ages of 10 months and 12 years. Of those, 38 percent had forgotten the abuse. Of the remaining women who remembered, 16 percent reported that they had for a period of time forgotten but subsequently recovered their memories. [46] Thus, during that time a "false negative" recorded for those women. These are the sort of distinctions for which Elaine Showalter in Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Media fails to account.”

TraumaSexual AbuseEpidemicsChild Sexual AbuseSurvivorsHystericalIncestPseudoscienceRepressed MemoriesFeministsFalse MemoriesTraumatic StressRepressed MemoryMisleadingPseudo ScienceAcademic ResearchRecovered MemoryIncestuousHystericsElaine ShowalterFalse NegativesWomen Survivors
Book:Trauma Cinema: Documenting Incest and the Holocaust
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“In a series of three studies, the offenders who claimed they were abused as a child were 67 percent, 65 percent, and 61 percent without the threat of a polygraph. With polygraph (and conditional immunity), the offenders who claimed they were abused as children were 29 percent, 32 percent, and 30 percent, respectively. The polygraph groups reported approximately half the amount of victimization as children as the nonpolygraph groups did. Nonetheless, the notion that most offenders were victims has spread throughout the field of sexual abuse and is strangely comforting for most professionals.”

LiarsSexual AbuseChild Sexual AbuseSurvivorsVictimizationPedophilesRapistsSex OffendersPredatorsChild AbusersPolygraphVictim PerpetratorsLie DetectorChild Sexual Abuse Lies
Book:Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders
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