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Sexual Abuse Quotes

Browse 482 quotes about Sexual Abuse.

Sexual Abuse Quotes

“A Momentary Flicker by Stewart Stafford Keeper of pristine candlelight, In corrupted hourglass time, Chest-pumped at your "yield"— So why asset-strip mine? You claim we shed virginity together, A lecherous faux-naif purloins truth, My age will be the years you get— That collar shall be your noose. Your crimes are beyond absolution, Your extant sextant for baleful stars, Fevered pleas and penitent sighs, To a confessional's hidden bars. So why scalpel-slit a seeping scar? Karma totals defrocked degradation, A besmeared, hacked-up oil painting— Damnation's inferno predation. Your words, woven with deception, Vanish like smoke from a flame. From shaded rebirth, I set forth. I reclaim my dawn, my light, my name. © 2026, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”

TraumaSurvivorSexual AbuseDark PoetryFeminist PoetryConfessional PoetryClergy AbuseInstitutional FailureEpstein FilesJustice Poetry
Author:Stewart Stafford
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“Whatever your age, you are the right age to be coming out and telling your truth. Find someone to tell- and tell, tell, tell, until your lungs ache. Tell until you can't tell anymore. It won't take away what happened to you, but it will re-map your life and take away the power from the abuse and the abuser. You are strong and resilient. You are not alone.”

SurvivorSexual AbuseChild Sexual AbuseDisclosureHealing From AbuseJust Tell
Book:Invisible Girls: The Truth About Sexual Abuse
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“In her book claiming that allegations of ritualistic abuse are mostly confabulations, La Fontaine’s (1998) comparison of social workers to ‘nazis’ shows the depth of feeling evident amongst many sceptics. However, this raises an important question: Why did academics and journalists feel so strongly about allegations of ritualistic abuse, to the point of pervasively misrepresenting the available evidence and treating women disclosing ritualistic abuse, and those workers who support them, with barely concealed contempt? It is of course true that there are fringe practitioners in the field of organised abuse, just as there are fringe practitioners in many other health-related fields. However, the contrast between the measured tone of the majority of therapists and social workers writing on ritualistic abuse, and the over-blown sensationalism of their critics, could not be starker. Indeed, Scott (2001) notes with irony that the writings of those who claimed that ‘satanic ritual abuse’ is a ‘moral panic’ had many of the features of a moral panic: scapegoating therapists, social workers and sexual abuse victims whilst warning of an impending social catastrophe brought on by an epidemic of false allegations of sexual abuse. It is perhaps unsurprising that social movements for people accused of sexual abuse would engage in such hyperbole, but why did this rhetoric find so many champions in academia and the media?”

MediaDenialBritainContemptChild AbuseSexual AbuseHypeTherapistsChild Sexual AbuseHysteriaMisinformationMass MediaRitual AbuseNazisSociety DenialEpidemicSatanic Ritual AbuseJournalistsAllegationsHyperboleDisinformationSensationalismReportScapegoatingOrganized AbuseRitualistic AbuseMoral PanicSatanic PanicFalse AllegationsSocial WorkersSkepticsConfabulationRitual Abuse MythScepticsJean La FontaineMisrepresentations
Book:Organised Sexual Abuse
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“The return of the voices would end in a migraine that made my whole body throb. I could do nothing except lie in a blacked-out room waiting for the voices to get infected by the pains in my head and clear off. Knowing I was different with my OCD, anorexia and the voices that no one else seemed to hear made me feel isolated, disconnected. I took everything too seriously. I analysed things to death. I turned every word, and the intonation of every word over in my mind trying to decide exactly what it meant, whether there was a subtext or an implied criticism. I tried to recall the expressions on people’s faces, how those expressions changed, what they meant, whether what they said and the look on their faces matched and were therefore genuine or whether it was a sham, the kind word touched by irony or sarcasm, the smile that means pity. When people looked at me closely could they see the little girl in my head, being abused in those pornographic clips projected behind my eyes? That is what I would often be thinking and such thoughts ate away at the façade of self-confidence I was constantly raising and repairing. (describing dissociative identity disorder/mpd symptoms)”

DepressionAbuseMental HealthTraumaSelf ConfidenceSurvivorChild AbuseSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationHeadacheAnorexiaDisconnectedMultiple Personality DisorderIncestAlter PersonalitiesVoicesDissociativeMigraineAltersAnorexicChild Sex AbuseInternal VoicesAnoreticPorongraphic
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“Weird? Absurd? That’s how it seemed to me. I had these forces, these compunctions, these alternative personalities inside me, driving me. It was like being a jack-in-the-box and I was unsure which personality was going to jump out next: Billy, who thought of himself as a cowboy or a terrorist; Kato the cutter; anorexic Shirley, whose only self-indulgence was binge drinking and the occasional salad sandwich. I didn’t dislike Shirley. I was afraid of her. Shirley knew things I didn’t.”

AbuseMental HealthTraumaSurvivorSexual AbuseDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationAnorexiaAmnesiaMultiple Personality DisorderIncestAlter PersonalitiesMemory LossDissociativePersonalitiesAltersIdentity AlterationSplit Personalities
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“Some alters are what Dr Ross describes in Multiple Personality Disorder as 'fragments', which are 'relatively limited psychic states that express only one feeling, hold one memory or carry out a limited task in the person's life. A fragment might be a frightened child who holds the memory of one particular abuse incident.' In complex multiples, Dr Ross continues, the `personalities are relatively full-bodied, complete states capable of a rang of emotions and behaviours.' The alters will have `executive control some substantial amount of time over the person life'. He stresses, and I repeat his emphasis, 'Complex MPD with over 15 alter personalities and complicated amnesic barriers are associated with 100 percent frequency of childhood physical, sexual and emotional abuse.”

AbuseVictimMental HealthTraumaMental IllnessSurvivorSexual AbuseEmotional AbuseFragmentsDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbuseAmnesiaMultiple Personality DisorderAlter PersonalitiesPhysical AbuseDissociativeFragmentationSplit PersonalityMpdAltersChild Sex Abuse
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“Did I imagine the castle, the dungeon, the ritual orgies and violations? Did Lucy, Billy, Samuel, Eliza, Shirley and Kato make it all up? I went back to the industrial estate and found the castle. It was an old factory that had burned to the ground, but the charred ruins of the basement remained. I closed my eyes and could see the black candles, the dancing shadows, the inverted pentagram, the people chanting through hooded robes. I could see myself among other children being abused in ways that defy imagination. I have no doubt now that the cult of devil worshippers was nothing more than a ring of paedophiles, the satanic paraphernalia a cover for their true lusts: the innocent bodies of young children.”

AbuseVictimMental HealthTraumaMental IllnessSurvivorSexual AbuseEmotional AbuseFragmentsDissociative Identity DisorderDissociationChild Sexual AbuseAmnesiaMultiple Personality DisorderRitual AbuseAlter PersonalitiesPhysical AbuseSatanic Ritual AbuseDissociativeFragmentationSplit PersonalityPedophileMpdAltersPaedophilesPaedophile RingDevil WorshipChild Sex Abuse
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“Incest, rape and abuse is rampant everywhere, even in our churches, but society is silent. It is a silent epidemic. One in three women will experience a sexual assault in her lifetime and one in six males, yet we don't speak of it, even in our churches!”

SilenceAbuseSecretsChild AbuseSexual AbuseRapeSexual AssaultIncestEpidemic
Book:Conduct Unbecoming: Rape, Torture, and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from Military Commanders
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“The book argues that even though many cases have been held up as classic examples of modern American “witch hunts,” none of them fits that description. McMartin certainly comes close. But a careful examination of the evidence presented at trial demonstrates why, in my view, a reasonable juror could vote for conviction, as many did in this case. Other cases that have been painted as witch-hunts turn out to involve significant, even overwhelming, evidence of guilt. There are a few cases to the contrary, but even those are more complicated than the witch-hunt narrative allows. In short, there was not, by any reasonable measure, an epidemic of “witch hunts” in the 1980s. There were big mistakes made in how some cases were handled, particularly in the earliest years. But even in those years there were cases such as those of Frank Fuster and Kelly Michaels that, I believe, were based on substantial evidence but later unfairly maligned as having no evidentiary support.”

RealityMediaCrimeEvidenceAbuseCourtGuiltGuiltyWitnessNarrativeChild AbuseSexual AbuseJuryChild Sexual AbuseJudgeRitual AbuseSociety DenialEpidemicTrialSatanic Ritual AbuseNot GuiltyChild RapeWitch HuntDay CareSraDaycareInstitutional AbuseWitchhuntChild MolestersFalse AllegationFrank FusterJurorKelly MichaelsManiuplationMcmartinOverwhelming Evidence
Book:The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children
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“I created this prayer collection to offer ways for people to bring about change in their lives. Everyone needs help at various times in their lives. No matter what we need or experience in life, we can always pray to make a difference for ourselves. We don’t have to be swept away by events or circumstances beyond our control. God is there to lend a helping hand, especially when we ask.”

Self HelpDepressionGamblingSexual AbusePrayersDrug AddictionSurvivors Of AbuseRecovery InspirationPornography AddictionAlchoholism
Book:Prayers for Help
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“The discovery that detonated Cleveland is one of Britain’s great contributions to awareness of child abuse. In 1986 and 1987 the Leeds paediatricians Dr Jane Wynne and Dr Christopher Hobbs reported in the Lancet that they were seeing more children who were being buggered than battered. About 300 cases were corroborated. The children were young – two-thirds were pre-school children – and anal abuse was more common than vaginal penetration. They also noted that ‘boys and girls seem to be at similar risk’. Almost half of the children who suffered anal abuse also showed a sign written up in the forensic textbooks as ‘anal dilation’, an anus opening when it was supposed to stay shut; opening and expecting entry. What the paediatricians were observing was not an acute sign, the effect of a single intrusion – a spasm or seizure – but a sign that was telling a story about everyday life; the anatomy of adaption. Anal dilation seemed to describe the architecture of abuse: it allowed the body to receive an incoming object, regularly.”

CrimeEvidenceAbuseVictimBritainSurvivorChild AbuseSexual AbuseRapeCoercionIncestCriminalClevelandAbusersPedophileRapistsSex OffendersPaedophileForensicCorroborated
Book:Stolen Voices: The People and Politics Behind the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony
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“And there’s one other matter I must raise. The epidemic of domestic sexual violence that lacerates the soul of South Africa is mirrored in the pattern of grotesque raping in areas of outright conflict from Darfur to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and in areas of contested electoral turbulence from Kenya to Zimbabwe. Inevitably, a certain percentage of the rapes transmits the AIDS virus. We don’t know how high that percentage is. We know only that women are subjected to the most dreadful double jeopardy. The point must also be made that there’s no such thing as the enjoyment of good health for women who live in constant fear of rape. Countless strong women survive the sexual assaults that occur in the millions every year, but every rape leaves a scar; no one ever fully heals. This business of discrimination against and oppression of women is the world’s most poisonous curse. Nowhere is it felt with greater catastrophic force than in the AIDS pandemic. This audience knows the statistics full well: you’ve chronicled them, you’ve measured them, the epidemiologists amongst you have disaggregated them. What has to happen, with one unified voice, is that the scientific community tells the political community that it must understand one incontrovertible fact of health: bringing an end to sexual violence is a vital component in bringing an end to AIDS. The brave groups of women who dare to speak up on the ground, in country after country, should not have to wage this fight in despairing and lonely isolation. They should hear the voices of scientific thunder. You understand the connections between violence against women and vulnerability to the virus. No one can challenge your understanding. Use it, I beg you, use it.”

ViolenceHealthAidsDiscriminationOppressionIsolationSexismSouth AfricaMisogynyAfricaUnited NationsDomestic ViolenceSexual AbuseRapeHivViolence Against WomenKenyaSexual AssaultRape CultureZimbabweSudanDarfurMarital RapeDemocratic Republic Of The Congo
Author:Stephen Lewis
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“Nobody goes no contact with a loving, caring, gentle, safe family. They end toxic relationships because all the other alternatives were exhausted and unsuccessful. They broke connections to abusive people because it was their last resort.”

Sexual AbuseToxic RelationshipsNarcissistic AbuseEstrangementIntergenerational TraumaScapegoatingTrue Crime StorySibling AbuseFamily Abuse
Book:Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma
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“This toxic pattern within the broken family system will continue from one generation to the next, until one brave survivor finally ends the cycle of abuse. The dysfunction, bullying, and abuse didn’t start with you, but it most certainly can end with you.”

TraumaBullyingChild AbusePtsdSexual AbuseNarcissistHealing JourneyDysfunctional FamiliesIntergenerational TraumaAbusive Siblings
Book:Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma
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“THE NO CONTACT RULE: 1. Zero contact; face to face & online. 2. No phone calls. 3. No text messaging. 4. No attending events where they're present. 5. No emails. 6. No letters, cards, or gifts. 7. No checking their social media profile. 8. No contacting their family and friends. 9. No combing through old photographs. 10. No going down memory lane. 11. Zero communication.”

Sexual AbuseNarcissistic AbuseDysfunctional FamilyEstrangementPsychological AbuseIntergenerational TraumaToxic SiblingsFlying MonkeysCycle BreakerNo Contact Rule
Book:Toxic Siblings: A Survival Guide to Rise Above Sibling Abuse & Heal Trauma
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“(Talking about the movement to deny the prevalence and effects of adult sexual exploitation of children) So what does this movement consist of? Who are the movers and shakers? Well molesters are in it, of course. There are web pages telling them how to defend themselves against accusations, to retain confidence about their ‘loving and natural’ feelings for children, with advice on what lawyers to approach, how to complain, how to harass those helping their children. Then there’s the Men’s Movements, their web pages throbbing with excitement if they find ‘proof’ of conspiracy between feminists, divorcing wives and therapists to victimise men, fathers and husbands. Then there are journalists. A few have been vitally important in the US and Britain in establishing the fightback, using their power and influence to distort the work of child protection professionals and campaign against children’s testimony. Then there are other journalists who dance in and out of the debates waggling their columns behind them, rarely observing basic journalistic manners, but who use this debate to service something else – a crack at the welfare state, standards, feminism, ‘touchy, feely, post-Diana victimhood’. Then there is the academic voice, landing in the middle of court cases or inquiries, offering ‘rational authority’. Then there is the government. During the entire period of discovery and denial, not one Cabinet minister made a statement about the prevalence of sexual abuse or the harm it caused. Finally there are the ‘retractors’. For this movement to take off, it had to have ‘human interest’ victims – the accused – and then a happy ending – the ‘retractors’. We are aware that those ‘retractors’ whose parents trail them to newspapers, television studios and conferences are struggling. Lest we forget, they recanted under palpable pressure.”

GovernmentPoliticalSufferingCrimeAbusePressureVictimDenialSurvivorChild AbuseSexual AbuseRapeCoercionChild Sexual AbuseSurvivorsIncestCriminalVictimsAbusersSociety DenialMedia ManipulationJournalistsFalse MemoriesPedophilePower DynamicsChild ProtectionAccusationsRapistsMedia DistortionSex OffendersMisuse Of PowerPaedophileHidden MotivesCrusadeAccused AdultsRetractorsPoliticspolitics
Book:Stolen Voices: The People and Politics Behind the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony
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“In this book we paint an unprecedented portrait of Britain’s first ‘false memory’ retraction and show that, like other ‘false memory’ cases which appeared in the public domain, memory itself was always a false trail – these women never forgot. We are not challenging people’s right to tell their own story and then to change it. But we do assert that the chance should be interpreted in the context that created it. Thousands of accounts of sexual and physical abuse in childhood cannot be explained by a pseudo-scientific ‘syndrome’. We have been shifted to the wrong debate, a debate about the malignancy of survivors and their allies, rather than those who have hurt them. That’s why the arguments have become so elusive. […]”

GovernmentPoliticalSufferingCrimeAbusePressureVictimDenialSurvivorChild AbuseSexual AbuseRapeCoercionSurvivorsIncestCriminalVictimsAbusersJournalistsFalse MemoriesPedophilePower DynamicsChild ProtectionAccusationsRapistsSex OffendersMisuse Of PowerPaedophileHidden MotivesCrusadeRetractors
Book:Stolen Voices: The People and Politics Behind the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony
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“Several psychologists (L. Armstrong, 1994; Enns, McNeilly, Corkery, & Gilbert, 1995; Herman, 1992; McFarlane & van der Kolk, 1996; Pope & Brown, 1996) contend that the controversy of delayed recall for traumatic events is likely to be influenced by sexism. Kristiansen, Gareau, Mittleholt, DeCourville, and Hovdestad (1995) found that people who were more authoritarian and who had less favorable attitudes toward women were less likely to believe in the veracity of women’s recovered memories for sexual abuse. Those who challenged the truthfulness of recovered memories were more likely to endorse negative statements about women, including the idea that battered women enjoy being abused. McFarlane and van der Kolk (1996) have noted that delayed recall in male combat veterans reported by Myers (1940) and Kardiner (1941) did not generate controversy, whereas delayed recall in female survivors of intrafamilial child sexual abuse has provoked considerable debate.”

TraumaDenialSexismBiasSexual AbuseControversyCredibilityChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsSurvivorsIncestTraumatic ExperiencesSociety DenialDoubting MindRecovered MemoriesTrauma MemoryAuthoritarianPsychological TraumaRecovered MemoryDelayed Reaction
Author:Rachel E. Goldsmith
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“Violators cannot live with the truth: survivors cannot live without it. There are those who still, once again, are poised to invalidate and deny us. If we don't assert our truth, it may again be relegated to fantasy. But the truth won't go away. It will keep surfacing until it is recognized. Truth will outlast any campaigns mounted against it, no matter how mighty, clever, or long. It is invincible. It's only a matter of which generation is willing to face it and, in so doing, protect future generations from ritual abuse.”

FantasyDenyPropagandaChild AbuseSexual AbuseRapeSurvivorsRitual AbuseVictimsAbusersPerpetratorsSociety DenialChild ProtectionInvalidationChild Sexual Abuse LiesInvalidateMedia DistortionsMedia CampaignTruth Violators
Book:Safe Passage to Healing: A Guide for Survivors of Ritual Abuse
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“If you were sexually abused & could not go to your family for support, you deserve to realize that your family failed you fundamentally. Your parents did not provide a safe atmosphere of support & protection for their children, which is a parent’s first responsibility. It was not your fault.”

HealingSexual AbuseChild Sexual AbuseHealing AbuseChild ProtectionParental RelationshipParental ResponsibilityHealing Insighs
Book:Invisible Girls: The Truth About Sexual Abuse
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“Another preoccupation fed into this dynamic relationship between discovery and denial: does sexual abuse actually matter? Should it, in fact, be allowed? After all, it was only in the 19070s that the Paedophile Information Exchange had argued for adults’ right to have sex with children – or rather by a slippery sleight of word, PIE inverted the imperative by arguing that children should have the right to have sex with adults. This group had been disbanded after the imprisonment of Tom O’Carroll, its leader, with some of its activists bunkered in Holland’s paedophile enclaves, only to re-appear over the parapets in the sex crime controversies of the 1990s. How recent it was, then, that paedophilia was fielded as one of the liberation movements, how many of those on the left and right of the political firmament, were – and still are – persuaded that sex with children is merely another case for individual freedom? Few people in Britain at the turn of the century publicly defend adults’ rights to sex with children. But some do, and they are to be found nesting in the coalition crusading against evidence of sexual suffering. They have learned from the 1970s, masked their intentions and diverted attention on to ‘the system’. Others may not have come out for paedophilia but they are apparently content to enter into political alliances with those who have. We believe that this makes their critique of survivors and their allies unreliable. Others genuinely believe in false memories, but may not be aware of the credentials of some of their advisors.”

PoliticalSufferingRightsCrimeAbuseVictimDenialSurvivorChild AbuseSexual AbuseRapeChild Sexual AbuseSurvivorsSlipperyIncestCriminalVictimsAbusersDysfunctional FamilySociety DenialLiberalFalse MemoriesPedophileChild ProtectionSex OffendersPaedophileHidden MotivesCrusadePaedophile Information Exchange
Book:Stolen Voices: The People and Politics Behind the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony
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“In order to establish the narrative that innocent men have been the victims of an epidemic of false allegations, “moral panic” advocates have misrepresented child protection interventions and legal cases in significant ways (R. Cheit, 2014; Kitzinger, 2004; Michael Salter, 2016). This has included championing the cause of convicted sex offenders despite overwhelming evidence of guilt (R. Cheit, 2014; R. E. Cheit, 2001; Olio & Cornell, 1998).”

Sexual AbuseChild Sexual AbuseHysteriaRitual AbusePseudoscienceChild ProtectionMoral PanicFalse AllegationsMiscarriages Of Justice
Book:The History of Surrealist Painting
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“Frosh (2002) has suggested that therapeutic spaces provide children and adults with the rare opportunity to articulate experiences that are otherwise excluded from the dominant symbolic order. However, since the 1990s, post-modern and post-structural theory has often been deployed in ways that attempt to ‘manage’ from; afar the perturbing disclosures of abuse and trauma that arise in therapeutic spaces (Frosh 2002). Nowhere is this clearer than in relation to organised abuse, where the testimony of girls and women has been deconstructed as symptoms of cultural hysteria (Showalter 1997) and the colonisation of women’s minds by therapeutic discourse (Hacking 1995). However, behind words and discourse, ‘a real world and real lives do exist, howsoever we interpret, construct and recycle accounts of these by a variety of symbolic means’ (Stanley 1993: 214). Summit (1994: 5) once described organised abuse as a ‘subject of smoke and mirrors’, observing the ways in which it has persistently defied conceptualisation or explanation. Explanations for serious or sadistic child sex offending have typically rested on psychiatric concepts of ‘paedophilia’ or particular psychological categories that have limited utility for the study of the cultures of sexual abuse that emerge in the families or institutions in which organised abuse takes pace. For those clinicians and researchers who take organised abuse seriously, their reliance upon individualistic rather than sociological explanations for child sexual abuse has left them unable to explain the emergence of coordinated, and often sadistic, multi—perpetrator sexual abuse in a range of contexts around the world.”

SexPowerMediaCrimePoliceCrisisJournalismTherapyControlChild AbuseSexual AbusePsychiatryTherapistsHysteriaLegalIncestRitual AbuseSadisticSatanic Ritual AbusePedophileChild ProtectionRapistsSex OffendersOrganized AbusePaedophilesPaedophileRitualistic AbuseMoral PanicSatanic PanicSocial WorkersPedophile NetworkPedophilicSex RingsChild Protection LawSensationalist
Book:Organised Sexual Abuse
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“Blaming therapy, social work and other caring professions for the confabulation of testimony of 'satanic ritual abuse' legitimated a programme of political and social action designed to contest the gains made by the women's movement and the child protection movement. In efforts to characterise social workers and therapists as hysterical zealots, 'satanic ritual abuse' was, quite literally, 'made fun of': it became the subject of scorn and ridicule as interest groups sought to discredit testimony of sexual abuse as a whole. The groundswell of support that such efforts gained amongst journalists, academics and the public suggests that the pleasures of disbelief found resonance far beyond the confines of social movements for people accused of sexual abuse. These pleasures were legitimised by a pseudo-scientific vocabulary of 'false memories' and 'moral panic' but as Daly (1999:219-20) points out 'the ultimate goal of ideology is to present itself in neutral, value-free terms as the very horizon of objectivity and to dismiss challenges to its order as the "merely ideological"'. The media spotlight has moved on and social movements for people accused of sexual abuse have lost considerable momentum. However, their rhetoric continues to reverberate throughout the echo chamber of online and 'old' media. Intimations of collusion between feminists and Christians in the concoction of 'satanic ritual abuse' continue to mobilise 'progressive' as well as 'conservative' sympathies for men accused of serious sexual offences and against the needs of victimised women and children. This chapter argues that, underlying the invocation of often contradictory rationalising tropes (ranging from calls for more scientific 'objectivity' in sexual abuse investigations to emotional descriptions of 'happy families' rent asunder by false allegations) is a collective and largely unarticulated pleasure; the catharthic release of sentiments and views about children and women that had otherwise become shameful in the aftermath of second wave feminism. It seems that, behind the veneer of public concern about child sexual abuse, traditional views about the incredibility of women's and children's testimony persist. 'Satanic ritual abuse has served as a lens through which these views have been rearticulated and reasserted at the very time that evidence of widespread and serious child sexual abuse has been consolidating. p60”

FeminismMediaPrejudiceFeministManipulationSexismChild AbuseRidiculeAccusedSexual AbuseScornDisbeliefChild Sexual AbuseHystericalOffendersVictimsSociety DenialSatanic Ritual AbuseInsensitivityFalse MemoriesPedophiliaChild ProtectionSocial ActionStereotypingOrganized AbuseOrganised AbuseMoral PanicFundamentalistsPseudo ScienceSatanic PanicFalse AllegationsWomen S MovementHystericsZealotsAlleged RapistsPseudo ScientificVictimised Women
Book:Organised Sexual Abuse
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“As mandatory reporting laws and community awareness drove an increase its child protection investigations throughout the 1980s, some children began to disclose premeditated, sadistic and organised abuse by their parents, relatives and other caregivers such as priests and teachers (Hechler 1988). Adults in psychotherapy described similar experiences. The dichotomies that had previously associated organised abuse with the dangerous, external ‘Other’ had been breached, and the incendiary debate that followed is an illustration of the depth of the collective desire to see them restored. Campbell (1988) noted the paradox that, whilst journalists and politicians often demand that the authorities respond more decisively in response to a ‘crisis’ of sexual abuse, the action that is taken is then subsequently construed as a ‘crisis’. There has been a particularly pronounced tendency of the public reception to allegations of organised abuse. The removal of children from their parents due to disclosures of organised abuse, the provision of mental health care to survivors of organised abuse, police investigations of allegations of organised abuse and the prosecution of alleged perpetrators of organised abuse have all generated their own controversies. These were disagreements that were cloaked in the vocabulary of science and objectivity but nonetheless were played out in sensationalised fashion on primetime television, glossy news magazines and populist books, drawing textual analysis. The role of therapy and social work in the construction of testimony of abuse and trauma. in particular, has come under sustained postmodern attack. Frosh (2002) has suggested that therapeutic spaces provide children and adults with the rare opportunity to articulate experiences that are otherwise excluded from the dominant symbolic order. However, since the 1990s, post-modern and post-structural theory has often been deployed in ways that attempt to ‘manage’ from; afar the perturbing disclosures of abuse and trauma that arise in therapeutic spaces (Frosh 2002). Nowhere is this clearer than in relation to organised abuse, where the testimony of girls and women has been deconstructed as symptoms of cultural hysteria (Showalter 1997) and the colonisation of women’s minds by therapeutic discourse (Hacking 1995). However, behind words and discourse, ‘a real world and real lives do exist, howsoever we interpret, construct and recycle accounts of these by a variety of symbolic means’ (Stanley 1993: 214). Summit (1994: 5) once described organised abuse as a ‘subject of smoke and mirrors’, observing the ways in which it has persistently defied conceptualisation or explanation.”

SexPowerMediaCrimePoliceCrisisControlChild AbuseSexual AbusePsychiatryHysteriaLegalIncestRitual AbuseSadisticSatanic Ritual AbusePedophileChild ProtectionRapistsSex OffendersOrganized AbusePaedophilesPaedophileRitualistic AbuseMoral PanicSatanic PanicSocial WorkersPedophile NetworkPedophilicSex RingsChild Protection Law
Book:Organised Sexual Abuse
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“At the time I was being molested, I thought I was the only one. My father controlled everything in our house and he always said that what was happening to me was natural and that I should accommodate him. Even though I have to look back sometimes, I am moving forward. And even though it's painful for me to face my mother's complacency, doing so has helped me understand that it wasn't my fault. If I could have read something at the time about sex abuse, if people had talked openly about, I could have been saved so many years of guilt and shame and secrecy. Each time I talk about my incest, I get rid of some of that shame and guilt. Each person I share with, no matter what their response, takes another piece of the pain away.”

HealingShameGuiltSecretsSexual AbuseSecrecyComplacencyChild Sexual AbuseIncestHealing InsightsChild RapeHealing From AbuseChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorFamily SecretsParental AbuseHidden PainChild Molestation
Book:Invisible Girls: The Truth About Sexual Abuse
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“The witch-hunt narrative is now the conventional wisdom about these cases. That view is so widely endorsed and firmly entrenched that so widely endorsed and firmly entrenched that there would seem to be nothing left to say about these cases. But a close examination of the witch hunt canon leads to some unsettling questions: Why is there so little in the way of academic scholarship about these cases? Almost all of the major witch-hunt writings have been in magazines, often without any footnotes to verify or assess the claims made. Why hasn't anyone writing about these cases said anything about how difficult they are to research? There are so many roadblocks and limitations to researching these cases that it would seem incumbent on any serious writer to address the limitations of data sources. Many of these cases seem to have been researched in a manner of days or weeks. Nevertheless, the cases are described in a definitive way that belies their length and complexity, along with the inherent difficulty in researching original trial court documents. This book is based on the first systematic examination of court records in these cases.”

MediaEvidenceCourtWitnessSpeculationSexual AbuseRumorChild Sexual AbuseMisinformationConventional WisdomMedia ManipulationTrialChild RapeDisinformationWitch Hunt1980sWitchhuntChild MolestersUrban Myth
Book:The Witch-Hunt Narrative: Politics, Psychology, and the Sexual Abuse of Children
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“Other personalities are created to handle new traumas, their existence usually occurring one at a time. Each has a singular purpose and is totally focused on that task. The important aspect of the mind's extreme dissociation is that each ego state is totally without knowledge of the other. Because of this, the researchers for the CIA and the Department of Defense believed they could take a personality, train him or her to be a killer and no other ego stares would be aware of the violence that was taking place. The personality running the body would be genuinely unaware of the deaths another personality was causing. Even torture could not expose the with, because the personality experiencing the torture would have no awareness of the information being sought. Earlier, such knowledge was gained from therapists working with adults who had multiple personalities. The earliest pioneers in the field, such as Dr. Ralph Alison, a psychiatrist then living in Santa Cruz, California, were helping victims of severe early childhood trauma. Because there were no protocols for treatment, the pioneers made careful notes, publishing their discoveries so other therapists would understand how to help these rare cases. By 1965, the information was fairly extensive, including the knowledge that only unusually intelligent children become multiple personalities and that sexual trauma endured by a restrained child under the age of seven is the most common way to induce hysteric dissociation.”

ViolenceMilitaryAbuseVictimMental HealthSoldierTraumaMental IllnessTortureSurvivorChild AbuseSexual AbuseSpyDissociative Identity DisorderCiaPsychiatristDissociationChild Sexual AbuseMind ControlChildhood TraumaMultiple Personality DisorderGovernment AbuseDissociativeSplit PersonalityTherapistMkultraTraumaticPsychotherapistExtreme AbuseSuper SoldierDepartment Of DefenseRalp Alison
Book:Secret Weapons: How Two Sisters Were Brainwashed to Kill for Their Country
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“Dissociation gets you through a brutal experience, letting your basic survival skills operate unimpeded…Your ability to survive is enhanced as the ability to feel is diminished…All feeling are blocked; you ‘go away.’ You are disconnected from the act, the perpetrator & yourself…Viewing the scene from up above or some other out-of-body perspective is common among sexual abuse survivors.”

AbuseSexual AbuseRapeNumbDissociationChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsDisconnectedNumbnessIncestChild RapeChild Sexual Abuse SurvivorDepersonalizationDissociatedOut Of Body ExperienceOut Of Body
Book:Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
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“Sexual abuse is also a secret crime, one that usually has no witness. Shame and secrecy keep a child from talking to siblings about the abuse, even if all the children in a family are being sexually assaulted. In contrast, if a child is physically or emotionally abused, the abuse is likely to occur in front of the other children in the family, at least some of the time. The physical and emotional abuse becomes part of the family's explicit history. Sexual abuse does not.”

CrimeShameChild AbuseSexual AbuseSecrecyChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsIncestDysfunctional FamilyDysfunctional FamiliesRepressed MemoriesAbusive ParentsMemory Represssion
Book:Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
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“Some alters are what Dr Ross describes in Multiple Personality Disorder as 'fragments'. which are 'relatively limited psychic states that express only one feeling, hold one memory, or carry out a limited task in the person's life. A fragment might be a frightened child who holds the memory of one particular abuse incident.' In complex multiples, Dr Ross continues, the 'personalities are relatively full-bodied, complete states capable of a range of emotions and behaviours.' The alters will have 'executive control some substantial amount of time over the person's life'. He stresses, and I repeat his emphasis, 'Complex MPD with over 15 alter personalities and complicated amnesia barriers are associated with 100 percent frequency of childhood physical, sexual and emotional abuse.' Did I imagine the castle, the dungeon, the ritual orgies and violations? Did Lucy, Billy, Samuel, Eliza, Shirley and Kato make it all up? I went back to the industrial estate and found the castle. It was an old factory that had burned to the ground, but the charred ruins of the basement remained. I closed my eyes and could see the black candles, the dancing shadows, the inverted pentagram, the people chanting through hooded robes. I could see myself among other children being abused in ways that defy imagination. I have no doubt now that the cult of devil worshippers was nothing more than a ring of paedophiles, the satanic paraphernalia a cover for their true lusts: the innocent bodies of young children.”

PsychologyAbuseMental HealthMemoryChild AbuseCultSexual AbuseEmotional AbuseFragmentsPsychiatryDissociative Identity DisorderChild Sexual AbuseAmnesiaMultiple Personality DisorderRitual AbuseMultiple PersonalitiesPhysical AbuseSatanic Ritual AbuseCover UpChild RapeMpdAltersPaedophilesPaedophile RingDevil WorshipOrgiesColin RossComplex MpdSpit Personality
Book:Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind
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“The themes that exercised the minds of survivor movements and their allies within the health and welfare professions generated a political project: how to revolutionise medical and judicial approaches to injured adults and children, how to raise awareness so that other people didn’t have to suffer the same, and how to understand, and then challenge, offenders who so love what they do to children that they can and must shut their minds to the feelings of children who have put their trust in them. P4”

LoveFeelingsPoliticalSufferingAwarenessCrimeHealthWelfareChild AbuseSexual AbuseChallengeRapeUnderstandChild Sexual AbuseSurvivorsOffendersSociety DenialPedophilePedophilia
Book:Stolen Voices: The People and Politics Behind the Campaign to Discredit Childhood Testimony
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“What still frightens me is that society is fickle. There was a time when nobody believed in the reality of abuse, and now it seems that just about everyone does, and yet, I realize we could still move backwards. It is important to stay firm: It took many years for the truth about sexual abuse to come to the fore. It is still fragile, and must be constantly nourished by research, reflection and above all, listening with empathy and an open heart to the stories of people who have been the victims of child abuse in its many forms and are now survivors. They have much to teach.”

Mental HealthSexual AbuseChild Sexual AbuseChild Abuse SurvivorsPsychological TraumaDenial Of Child AbuseReality Of Abuse
Author:Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson
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“Despite its popularity amongst critical criminologists, the empirical basis of the moral panic account of sexual abuse has been shown to be substantially untrue. There is no evidence of an increase in reckless or baseless sexual abuse prosecutions during the 1990s, which was supposedly the height of the “moral panic” (Cross, Walsh, Simone, & Jones, 2003).”

Sexual AbuseRapeChild Sexual AbuseWitch HuntMoral PanicRape MythsFalse AllegationsFalse Allegations Of Rape
Book:The History of Surrealist Painting
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“Memory repression thrives in shame, secrecy, and shock. The shame and degradation experienced during sexual assault is profound, especially for children who have no concept of what is happening to them or why. Sexual abuse is so bizarre and horrible that the frightened child feels compelled to bury the event deep inside his or her mind.”

ShameSexual AbuseRepressionChild Sexual AbuseSexual AssaultRepressed MemoriesDissociative AmnesiaForgetting The PastForgetting The Pain
Book:Repressed Memories: A Journey to Recovery from Sexual Abuse
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“You can avoid the issues from abuse for only so long. Sooner or later, the problems in your life cause you to either face it or go deeper into denial. Most of you will eventually be forced into admitting that it is indeed the sexual abuse that is the root of your problems. Even then, the tendency will be to ‘forgive and forget’ in the belief that by doing so the pain will be assuaged.”

Sexual AbuseChild Sexual AbuseAbuse SurvivorsHealing InsightsSurvivors Of Abuse
Book:The Right to Innocence: Healing the Trauma of Childhood Sexual Abuse: A Therapeutic 7-Step Self-Help Program for Men and Women, Including How to Choose a Therapist and Find a Support Group
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“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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“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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“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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