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Sexual Abuse Quotes

Browse 482 quotes about Sexual Abuse.

Sexual Abuse Quotes

“Being indifferent about sexual abuse is an absolute assault on the truth of who the victim is!”

IndifferenceSexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsSexual AssaultChildhood TraumaAbused WomenChildhood Sexual AbuseJIndifference And BullyingChildhood Abuse Quotes
Book:Breaking Free From the Chains of Silence: A respectful exploration into the ramifications of abuse hidden behind closed doors
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“Along with the trust issues, one of the hardest parts to deal with is the feeling of not being believed or supported, especially by your own grandparents and extended family. When I have been through so much pain and hurt and have to live with the scars every day, I get angry knowing that others think it is all made up or they brush it off because my cousin was a teenager. I was ten when I was first sexually abused by my cousin, and a majority of my relatives have taken the perpetrator's side. I have cried many times about everything and how my relatives gave no support or love to me as a kid when this all came out. Not one relative ever came up to that innocent little girl I was and said "I am sorry for what you went through" or "I am here for you." Instead they said hurtful things: "Oh he was young." "That is what kids do." "It is not like he was some older man you didn't know." Why does age make a difference? It is a sick way of thinking. Sexual abuse is sexual abuse. What is wrong with this picture? It brings tears to my eyes the way my relatives have reacted to this and cannot accept the truth. Denial is where they would rather stay.”

FamilyIssuesTrustDenialSurvivorSexual AbuseRapeTriggersDisbeliefCopingChild Sexual AbuseIncestDisclosureDysfunctional FamilySociety DenialDysfunctional FamiliesChild RapeChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorAbuse SurvivorMolestationMinimizationLack Of SupportPedophile ProtectorsMolestMolested
Book:Living for Today: From Incest and Molestation to Fearlessness and Forgiveness
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“When shame is met with compassion and not received as confirmation of our guilt, we can begin to see how slant a lens it has had us looking through. That awareness lets us step back far enough to see that if we can let it go, we will see ourselves as clean where we once thought we were dirty. We will remember our innocence. We will see how our shame supported a system in which the perpetrators were protected and we bore the brunt of their offense — first in its actuality, then again in carrying their shame for it. If the method we chose to try to beat out shame was perfectionism, we can relax now, shake the burden off our shoulders, and give ourselves a chance to loosen up and make some errors. Hallelujah! Our freedom will not come from tireless effort and getting it all exactly right.”

FreedomHealingShameGuiltRecoveryInnocenceImperfectOffenseSexual AbusePerfectionismChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsIncestHealing InsightsAbusersPerpetratorsChild RapeHealing From AbuseRecovery From AbuseAbuserInnocence LostPerfectly ImperfectBurdens Of The PastFalse GuiltPeptrator
Book:Beyond Survival: A Writing Journey for Healing Childhood Sexual Abuse
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“Women facing sexual violence rarely speak up or call the police because they know what awaits them. Even good men hate it when women express their feelings, often responding with mockery, insults or threats. There’s a box in the minds of American men, a box labeled 'Girl Problems,' into which men can stuff any complaint made by women they wish to ignore.”

WomenFeminismFeministGirlsWomen S RightsSexual AbuseRapeAmerican CultureSexual AssaultSexual Violence
Book:Gods of the Flesh: A Skeptic's Journey Through Sex, Politics and Religion
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“I had a bizarre rapport with this mirror and spent a lot of time gazing into the glass to see who was there. Sometimes it looked like me. At other times, I could see someone similar but different in the reflection. A few times, I caught the switch in mid-stare, my expression re-forming like melting rubber, the creases and features of my face softening or hardening until the mutation was complete. Jekyll to Hyde, or Hyde to Jekyll. I felt my inner core change at the same time. I would feel more confident or less confident; mature or childlike; freezing cold or sticky hot, a state that would drive Mum mad as I escaped to the bathroom where I would remain for two hours scrubbing my skin until it was raw. The change was triggered by different emotions: on hearing a particular piece of music; the sight of my father, the smell of his brand of aftershave. I would pick up a book with the certainty that I had not read it before and hear the words as I read them like an echo inside my head. Like Alice in the Lewis Carroll story, I slipped into the depths of the looking glass and couldn’t be sure if it was me standing there or an impostor, a lookalike. I felt fully awake most of the time, but sometimes while I was awake it felt as if I were dreaming. In this dream state I didn’t feel like me, the real me. I felt numb. My fingers prickled. My eyes in the mirror’s reflection were glazed like the eyes of a mannequin in a shop window, my colour, my shape, but without light or focus. These changes were described by Dr Purvis as mood swings and by Mother as floods, but I knew better. All teenagers are moody when it suits them. My Switches could take place when I was alone, transforming me from a bright sixteen-year-old doing her homework into a sobbing child curled on the bed staring at the wall. The weeping fit would pass and I would drag myself back to the mirror expecting to see a child version of myself. ‘Who are you?’ I’d ask. I could hear the words; it sounded like me but it wasn’t me. I’d watch my lips moving and say it again, ‘Who are you?”

ChangeEmotionIdentityAbuseMental HealthTraumaSurvivorChildDreamingSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderUnrealDissociationMirrorAmnesiaMultiple Personality DisorderIncestIdentity CrisisUnrealityMemory LossDissociativeSplit PersonalityTriggerIdentity ConfusionImpostorTriggeredDissociated StateDream LikeLookalikePersonality SwitchEmotionalsIdentity AlternationIdentity Switch
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“If I was set an essay on Friday, I’d spend three hours on Saturday morning in the library. Was that normal? I didn’t know. What I did know was that I felt less prone to depression and more normal walking through Venice or staring out over the lake in Zurich. At home I wrestled continually with my moods. The black thing inside me gnawed like a rat at my self-esteem and self-confidence. I felt there was a happy person inside me too, who wanted to enjoy life, to be normal, but my feelings of self-loathing and the deep distrust I had towards my father wouldn’t allow that sunny person to come out. When the black thing had an iron grip on me, I couldn’t even look at my father: Did you do bad things to me when I was little? Like a line from a song stuck in your brain, the words ran through my head and never once came out of my mouth. Not that I needed to say what was in my mind. I was sure Father could read my thoughts in my moods, in the blank, dead stare of my eyes. It was hardly surprising that there was always an atmosphere of strain and awkwardness in the house, and the blame was always mine: Alice and her moods, Alice and her anorexia; Alice and her low self-esteem; Alice and her inescapable feelings of loss and emptiness.”

EmotionEmotionalDepressionEmptyAbuseMental HealthTraumaTeenagerEmptinessSurvivorSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbuseAnorexiaEssayMultiple Personality DisorderIncestDissociative
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“The asylum, and later the national health service, warehoused thousands of patients made mad by the intrusions of a sexual predator. But these institutions had been dominated by the discredited Freudian fantasy that sexual abuse doesn’t happen - that it is our illicit desires that drive us crazy. A century ago, Freud recoiled from his own theory of the sexual seduction of children and projected the problem back into the patient. He claimed in his Aetiology of Hysteria that clients, typically women, were describing their fantasies, not facts, not ‘real events’. P3”

RealFactsFantasyCrazyEventsHealthPatientChild AbuseSexual AbuseRapeProjectionHysteriaFreudPedophileAsylumNational Health ServiceDiscredited
Book:Stolen Voices: The People and Politics Behind the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony
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“Every where the years bring to all enough of sin and sorrow; but in slavery the very dawn of life is darkened by these shadows. Even the little child, who is accustomed to wait on her mistress and her children, will learn, before she is twelve years old, why it is that her mistress hates such and such a one among the slaves. Perhaps the child's own mother is among those hated ones. She listens to violent outbreaks of jealous passion, and cannot help understanding what is the cause. She will become prematurely knowing in evil things. Soon she will learn to tremble when she hears her master's footfall. She will be compelled to realize that she is no longer a child. If God has bestowed beauty upon her, it will prove her greatest curse. That which commands admiration in the white woman only hastens the degradation of the female slave.”

WomenBeautySlaveryAfrican AmericansSexual AbuseRapeSlavesSexual ViolenceBlacksgirls
Book:Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
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“Shame is an emotion that many rape survivors struggle with for reasons that can be more complicated than we might think. It is a distinctly insidious form of humiliation, the result of a serious injury to our self-esteem, which can be exacerbated by the feeling that we’ve done something wrong. Humiliation is par for the course when your body is used sexually against your will—that part of the aftermath of sexual violence is pretty well understood. Less well appreciated is why rape survivors may end up feeling responsible for what has happened to them. A common assumption is that women blame themselves because of low self-esteem: if only I had dressed differently, if only I had not looked at him that way, if only I had made better decisions for myself. While a woman’s self-image may play a role in how she comes to understand what has happened to her, the sense of responsibility held by many rape survivors is at least partly driven by a dominant worldview regarding personal safety and harm. Although this picture is slowly changing, historically, at least in the West, girls have been taught from a young age that the world is basically a safe place and that so long as you are sufficiently careful and intelligent, you can protect yourself from any serious harm. Underscoring this narrative is the fact that in our entertainment-saturated media culture, the everydayness of sexual violence against women is overlooked in favour of sensationalized stories of extreme violence. And because rape is typically experienced in private, unlike other traumatic experiences, like combat fighting in war, for instance, the clear evidence of its pervasiveness is obscured from our collective vision. This further reinforces the mistaken notion that the world is a benign place for women—and worse, it makes incidents of sexual violence against women look like a series of unrelated, isolated events when in fact they are the systematic consequence of patriarchal social structures. So how does the rape survivor reconcile this dominant worldview with what has happened to her? After all, it cannot be true both that the world is a safe place and that you were raped, unless, of course, the rape was your fault. The other alternative is to reject the dominant worldview, but this means accepting the fact that we live in a world where women, by virtue of being women, are at risk. For a variety of reasons, it can be easier and less painful to believe instead that being raped was a result of your own poor choices.”

WomenShameTraumaPtsdSexual Abuse
Book:One Hour in Paris: A True Story of Rape and Recovery
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“[God] occupies all the difficult spaces humanity has endured. While I can't fully reconcile the problem of evil and why so many people have been sexually violated over the centuries, I do know this: Jesus has wept alongside me, and he weeps for his church to rise up valiantly and love the least, the last, and the lost. This is our WE TOO moment, to purposefully suffer alongside the sexually broken.”

FaithEvilChurchHistoryResponseSexual AbuseRise UpGod CaresSexual Abuse ResponseLove Does
Book:We Too: How the Church Can Respond Redemptively to the Sexual Abuse Crisis
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“Being Scared-off by Evil Lastly, we deny the presence of evil because we are terrified by the horrendously hurtful, cruel, and bloody kinds of evil people tell us about—if we are willing to listen. This was poignantly brought home during an interdisciplinary case conference involving a resident who was counseling for the first time a woman who had been sexually abused. As we worked with him, it became clear that he was resisting entering what he called the 'psychic cave" of her sealed—off experience from which she was shouting for assistance. Because of his resistance, he was not providing her the support and guidance she so desperately needed, and he was not facilitating her working through the abuse and hurt that were continuing to impact her life. As he was confronted about this at one point in the conference, he stated tearfully: "I'm afraid if I help her move into her memories. I will have to go with her, and if I go with her, my view of the world as a basically good and safe place will be shattered. I'm not sure I can handle that for myself, or be able to think about the fact that my wife and kids may be more vulnerable living in this world than I can be comfortable believing" (Means 1995, 299).”

EvilFearAbuseVictimMental IllnessVulnerabilitySurvivorChild AbusePtsdSexual AbuseWorldviewChild Sexual AbusePsychotherapyCounselingRapidJust WorldNature Of The WorldJust World Beliefs
Book:Trauma and Evil: Healing the Wounded Soul
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“It was Freud's ambition to discover the cause of hysteria, the archetypal female neurosis of his time. In his early investigations, he gained the trust and confidence of many women, who revealed their troubles to him.Time after time, Freud's patients, women from prosperous, conventional families, unburdened painful memories of childhood sexual encounters with men they had trusted: family friends, relatives, and fathers. Freud initially believed his patients and recognized the significance of their confessions. In 1896, with the publication of two works, The Aetiology of Hysteria and Studies on Hysteria, he announced that he had solved the mystery of the female neurosis. At the origin of every case of hysteria, Freud asserted, was a childhood sexual trauma. But Freud was never comfortable with this discovery, because of what it implied about the behavior of respectable family men. If his patients' reports were true, incest was not a rare abuse, confined to the poor and the mentally defective, but was endemic to the patriarchal family. Recognizing the implicit challenge to patriarchal values, Freud refused to identify fathers publicly as sexual aggressors. Though in his private correspondence he cited "seduction by the father" as the "essential point" in hysteria, he was never able to bring himself to make this statement in public. Scrupulously honest and courageous in other respects, Freud falsified his incest cases. In The Aetiology of Hysteria, Freud implausibly identified governessss, nurses, maids, and children of both sexes as the offenders. In Studies in Hysteria, he managed to name an uncle as the seducer in two cases. Many years later, Freud acknowledged that the "uncles" who had molested Rosaslia and Katharina were in fact their fathers. Though he had shown little reluctance to shock prudish sensibilities in other matters, Freud claimed that "discretion" had led him to suppress this essential information. Even though Freud had gone to such lengths to avoid publicly inculpating fathers, he remained so distressed by his seduction theory that within a year he repudiated it entirely. He concluded that his patients' numerous reports of sexual abuse were untrue. This conclusion was based not on any new evidence from patients, but rather on Freud's own growing unwillingness to believe that licentious behavior on the part of fathers could be so widespread. His correspondence of the period revealed that he was particularly troubled by awareness of his own incestuous wishes toward his daughter, and by suspicions of his father, who had died recently. p9-10”

LiesMental HealthSexismSexual AbusePsychiatryChild Sexual AbuseNeurosisHysteriaFathersSexistIncestNeuronsSociety DenialFreudFamous PeopleCover UpChildhood Sexual AbuseSigmund FreudFather DaughterHysterical DissociationHistory Of PsychologySeduction TheoryAeitologyFamous PsychiatristsHistory Of HysteriaHistory Of IncestHistory Of PsychiatryStudies On HysteriaThe Aetiology Of Hysteria
Book:Father-Daughter Incest
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“[Refers to 121 children taken into care in Cleveland due to suspected abuse (1987) and later returned to their parents] Sue Richardson, the child abuse consultant at the heart of the crisis, watched as cases began to unravel: “All the focus started to fall on the medical findings; other supportive evidence, mainly which we held in the social services department, started to be screened out. A situation developed where the cases either were proven or fell on the basis of medical evidence alone. Other evidence that was available to the court, very often then, never got put. We would have had statement from the child, the social workers and the child psychologist’s evidence from interviewing. We would have evidence of prior concerns, either from social workers or teachers, about the child’s behaviour or other symptoms that they might have been showing, which were completely aside from the medical findings. (Channel 4 1997) Ten years after the Cleveland crisis, Sue Richardson was adamant that evidence relating to children’s safety was not presented to the courts which subsequently returned those children to their parents: “I am saying that very clearly. In some cases, evidence was not put in the court. In other cases, agreements were made between lawyers not to put the case to the court at all, particularly as the crisis developed. Latterly, that children were sent home subject to informal agreements or agreements between lawyers. The cases never even got as far as the court. (Channel 4, 1997)” Nor is Richardson alone. Jayne Wynne, one of the Leeds paediatricians who had pioneered the use of RAD as an indicator of sexual abuse and who subsequently had detailed knowledge of many of the Cleveland children, remains concerned by the haphazard approach of the courts to their protection. I think the implication is that the children were left unprotected. The children who were being abused unfortunately returned to homes and the abuse may well have been ongoing. (Channel 4 1997)”

LawCrimeEvidenceDoctorsLiesAbusePropagandaManipulationChild AbuseSexual AbuseHypeChild Sexual AbuseAccusationLegalAbuse Of PowerVictimsClevelandAbusersSociety DenialCriminal Justice SystemMedia ManipulationAllegationsChild RapePedophiliaChild ProtectionAbused ChildrenMedia DistortionFalse AccusationPaedophile RingSystemic FailureFalse AllegationsSocial ServicesPedophile RingChild CustodyNspcc
Book:Creative Responses to Child Sexual Abuse: Challenges and Dilemmas
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“from: The Portrayal of Child Sexual Assault in Introductory Psychology Textbooks - Elizabeth J. Letourneau, Tonya C. Lewis One of the central questions surrounding the debate on memories of CSA is how often false or repressed memories actually occur. The APA working group (Alpert et al., 1996) and other experts (e.g., Loftus, 1993a) noted that no reliable method can distinguish between accurate and inaccurate memories. Therefore, no one can determine the prevalence of false or repressed memories. Nevertheless, six texts (30%) implied that false memories occur frequently (see Table 1). Of these, three included the opinionated suggestion that a "witch hunt" may be occurring in which innocent parents are routinely accused of, and then severely punished for, CSA. Two texts suggested that false memories of CSA must occur because an entire support group (the FMSF) has been formed for falsely accused parents. These authors apparently failed to consider that some members of the FMSF may actually have sexually assaulted children but are motivated to appear innocent. (85)”

OpinionLiesMental HealthChild AbuseBiasSexual AbuseRapeHypeChild Sexual AbuseAccusationIncestPseudoscienceSociety DenialRepressed MemoriesFalse MemoriesPedophileWitch HuntRecovered MemoriesFalse Memory Syndrome FoundationFalse Memory SyndromeDenial Of Child AbuseMemory WarsFalse AllegationPseudoscientifcInflammatory
Book:Handbook for Teaching Introductory Psychology: Volume II
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“We may also discover that sexual abuse helps to explain the high prevalence rates of eating disorders among women and may lend some insight into why we are starting to see more documentation of eating disorders among boys as we see the reports of sexual abuse for male children increasing. Culture alone cannot explain the phenomena of such high rates of eating disorders.”

MenCultureBoysShameSexual AbuseBody ImageEating DisordersChild Sexual AbuseMale Sexual Abuse
Book:Healing from the Trauma of Childhood Sexual Abuse: The Journey for Women
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“God whispered, "You endured a lot. For that I am truly sorry, but grateful. I needed you to struggle to help so many. Through that process you would grow into who you have now become. Didn't you know that I gave all my struggles to my favorite children? One only needs to look at the struggles given to your older brother Jesus to know how important you have been to me.”

LifeYearsGodPainFaithHopeLostAnswersHealingSilenceCompassionAcceptingGraceJourneyTearsSorrowLivingEmpathyLonelyMercyAbuseShameIllnessInsightMoodTrialsRejectionGossipJobIgnoredCryingIntrospectionHumiliationMisunderstandingSexual AbuseStrugglesBulliedGod S LoveHackingGod S PlanLonlinessWrong ChoicesMental AbusePhysical AbuseDefamationSelf EvaluationMisdiagnosisLoss Of FaithLoss Of FamilyCyberbullyingEmptynessAutoimmune DiseaseSpiritual AbuseTsloamaTo LiveFeeling DeeplyLoss Of DignityLost ChildrenLoss Of HealthLoss Of Time
Author:Shannon L. Alder
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“In order to escape accountability for his crimes, the perpetrator does everything in his power to promote forgetting. Secrecy and silence are the perpetrator’s first line of defense. If secrecy fails, the perpetrator attacks the credibility of his victim. If he cannot silence her absolutely, he tries to make sure that no one listens. To this end, he marshals an impressive array of arguments, from the most blatant denial to the most sophisticated and elegant rationalization. After every atrocity one can expect to hear the same predictable apologies: it never happened; the victim lies; the victim exaggerates; the victim brought it upon herself; and in any case it is time to forget the past and move on. The more powerful the perpetrator, the greater is his prerogative to name and define reality, and the more completely his arguments prevail.”

SilencePowerAbuseCriminalsChild AbuseSexual AbuseRapeSecrecyAttackingCredibilityAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsAbuse Of PowerAbusersPerpetratorsSociety DenialBacklashAllegationsSurvivors Of AbuseRepressed MemoriesRecovered MemoriesRapistsTrauma MemoriesSilencing DissentSurvivor Of AbuseAttacking PeopleFalse Memory Syndrome MythLack Of AccountabilitySilencing Children
Book:Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror
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“But no matter how much evil I see, I think it’s important for everyone to understand that there is much more light than darkness.”

GodSpiritualityHopeJusticeHealingHealthDepressionEmpowermentShameMental HealthRecoverySexual AbuseRapeSexual AssaultSexual ViolenceSpiritual Health
Book:To the Survivors: One Man's Journey as a Rape Crisis Counselor with True Stories of Sexual Violence
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