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Sexual Assault Quotes

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“Take your hands off him.' She did. 'Unshackle him.' Lucien's skin drained of colour as Ianthe obeyed me, her face queerly vacant, pliant. The blue stone shackles thumped to the mossy ground. Lucien's shirt was askew, the top button on his pants already undone. The roaring that filled my mind was so loud I could barely hear myself as I said, 'Pick up that rock.' Lucien remained pressed against that tree. And he watched in silence as Ianthe stopped to pick up a grey, rough rock about the size of an apple. 'Put your right hand on that boulder.' She obeyed, though a tremor went down her spine. Her mind thrashed and struggled against me, like a fish snared on a line. I dug my mental talons in deeper, and some inner voice of hers began screaming. 'Smash your hand with the rock as hard as you can until I tell you to stop.' The hand she'd put on him, on so many others. Ianthe brought the stone up. The first impact was a muffled, wet thud. The second was an actual crack. The third drew blood. Her arm rose and fell, her body shuddering with the agony. And I said to her very clearly, 'You will never touch another person against their will. You will never convince yourself that they truly want your advances; that they're playing games. You will never know another's touch unless they initiate, unless it's desired by both sides.' Thwack; crack; thud. 'You will not remember what happened here. You will tell the others that you fell.' Her ring finger had shifted in the wrong direction. 'You are allowed to see a healer to set the bones. But not to erase the scarring. And every time you look at that hand, you are going to remember that touching people against their will has consequences, and if you do it again, everything you are will cease to exist. You will live with that terror every day, and never know where it originates. Only the fear of something chasing you, hunting you, waiting for you the instant you let your guard down.' Silent tears of pain flowed down her face. 'You can stop now.' The bloodied rock tumbled onto the grass. Her hand was little more than cracked bones wrapped in shredded skin. 'Kneel here until someone finds you.' Ianthe fell to her knees, her ruined hand leaking blood onto her pale robes. 'I debated slitting your throat this morning,' I told her. 'I debated it all last night while you slept beside me. I've debated it every single day since I learned you sold out my sisters to Hybern.' I smiled a bit. 'But I think this is a better punishment. And I hope you live a long, long life, Ianthe, and never know a moment's peace.' I stared down at her for a moment longer, tying off the tapestry of words and commands I'd woven into her mind, and turned to Lucien. He'd fixed his pants, his shirt. His wide eyes slid from her to me, then to the bloodied stone. 'The word you're looking for, Lucien,' crooned a deceptively light female voice, 'is daemati.”

“I heard Lucien first. 'Back off.' A low female laugh. Everything in me went still and cold at that sound. I'd heard it once before- in Rhysand's memory. Keep going. They were distracted, horrible as it was. Keep going, keep going, keep going. 'I thought you'd seek me out after the Rite,' Ianthe purred. They couldn't be more than thirty feet through the trees. Far enough away not to hear my presence, if I was quiet enough. 'I was obligated to perform the Rite,' Lucien snapped. 'That night wasn't the product of desire, believe me.' 'We had fun, you and I.' 'I'm a mated male now.' Every second was the ringing of my death knell. I'd primed everything to fall; I'd long since stopped feeling any guilt or doubt about my plan. Not with Alis now safely away. And yet- and yet- 'You don't act that way with Feyre.' A silk-wrapped threat. 'You're mistaken.' 'Am I?' Twigs and leaves crunched, as if she was circling him. 'You put your hands all over her.' I had done my job too well, provoked her jealousy too much with every instance I'd found ways to get Lucien to touch me in her presence, in Tamlin's presence. 'Do not touch me,' he growled. And then I was moving. I masked the sound of my footfalls, silent as a panther as I stalked to the little clearing where they stood. Where Lucien stood, back against a tree- twin bands of blue stone shackled around his wrists. I'd seen them before. On Rhys, to immobilise his power. Stone hewn from Hybern's rotted land, capable of nullifying magic. And in this case... holding Lucien against that tree as Ianthe surveyed him like a snake before a meal. She slid a hand over the broad panes of his chest, his stomach. And Lucien's eyes shot to me as I stepped between the trees, fear and humiliation reddening his golden skin. 'That's enough,' I said. Ianthe whipped her head to me. Her smile was innocent, simpering. But I saw her note the pack, Tamlin's bandolier. Dismiss them. 'We were in the middle of a game. Weren't we, Lucien?' He didn't answer. And the sight of those shackles on him, however she'd trapped him, the sight of her hand still on his stomach- 'We'll return to the camp when we're done,' she said, turning to him again. Her hand slid lower, not for his own pleasure, but simply to throw it in my face that she could-”

“I'm not going to be a part of this war you think is coming. You say I should be a weapon, not a pawn- they seem like the same to me. The only difference is who's wielding it.' 'I want your help, not to manipulate you,' he snapped. His flare of tempter made me at last lift my head. 'You want my help because it'll piss off Tamlin.' Shadows danced around his shoulders- as if the wings were trying to take form. 'Fine,' he breathed. 'I dug that grave myself, with all I did Under the Mountain. But I need your help. Again, I could feel the other unspoken words. Ask me why; push me about it. And again, I didn't want to. Didn't have the energy to. Rhys said quietly, 'I was a prisoner to her court for nearly fifty years. I was tortured and beaten and fucked until only telling myself who I was, what I had to protect, kept me from trying to find a way to end it. Please- help me keep that from happening again. To Prythian.' Some distant part of my heart ached and bled at the words, at what he'd laid bare. But Tamlin had made exceptions- he'd lightened the guards' presence, allowed me to roam a bit more freely. He was trying. We were trying. I wouldn't jeopardize that. So I went back to eating. Rhys didn't say another word.”

“Correlation and causality. Why is it that throughout the animal kingdom and in every human culture, males account for most aggression and violence? Well, what about testosterone and some related hormones, collectively called androgens, a term that unless otherwise noted, I will use simplistically as synonymous with testosterone. In nearly all species, males have more circulating testosterone than do females, who secrete small amounts of androgens from the adrenal glands. Moreover, male aggression is most prevalent when testosterone levels are highest; adolescence and during mating season in seasonal breeders. Thus, testosterone and aggression are linked. Furthermore, there are particularly high levels of testosterone receptors in the amygdala, in the way station by which it projects to the rest of the brain, the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis, and in its major targets, the hypothalamus, the central gray of the mid-brain, and the frontal cortex. But these are merely correlative data. Showing that testosterone causes aggression requires a subtraction plus a replacement experiment. Subtraction, castrate a male: do levels of aggression decrease? Yes, including in humans. This shows that something coming from the testes causes aggression. Is it testosterone? Replacement: give that castrated individual replacement testosterone. Do pre-castration levels of aggression return? Yes, including in humans, thus testosterone causes aggression. Time to see how wrong that is. The first hint of a complication comes after castration. When average levels of aggression plummet in every species, but crucially, not to zero, well, maybe the castration wasn't perfect, you missed some bits of testes, or maybe enough of the minor adrenal androgens are secreted to maintain the aggression. But no, even when testosterone and androgens are completely eliminated, some aggression remains, thus some male aggression is testosterone independent. This point is driven home by castration of some sexual offenders, a legal procedure in a few states. This is accomplished with chemical castration, administration of drugs that either inhibit testosterone production or block testosterone receptors. Castration decreases sexual urges in the subset of sex offenders with intense, obsessive, and pathological urges. But otherwise, castration doesn't decrease recidivism rates as stated in one meta-analysis. Hostile rapists and those who commit sex crimes motivated by power or anger are not amenable to treatment with the anti-androgenic drugs. This leads to a hugely informative point. The more experience the male had being aggressive prior to castration, the more aggression continues afterward. In otherwise, the less his being aggressive in the future requires testosterone and the more it's a function of social learning.”

“Assault survivors respond differently. There's no right or wrong way to react after being physically, emotionally, and/or sexually abused. Some people don't discuss it. They prefer to not rehash it. Others may need to communicate their shock, pain, anger, and trauma. Either way, the assault can be so overwhelming that we may respond in three ways - fight, flight, or freeze.”

“Nesta summoned the dead. To do what her own body could not. Though she had fought back against Tomas, against the Cauldron, against the King of Hybern, they had all happened to her. She had survived, but she had been helpless and afraid. Not today. Today, she would happen to him.”

“Consent & Manhood (The Sonnet) Better deemed a coward than forward, For there is too much at stake. Stand ready to wait till infinity, Without violating her personal space. She's not your bonerville, Until she gives you consent. Remember, consent is the line, Between a baboon and a sapiens. Expose your feeling with your gestures, Earn her trust without forcing yourself. Keep your libido down, below your knee, Till you are asked to strip all restraint. It is no man that turns a beast at the sight of woman. Real Man is a father, friend and lover - all in one.”

“One tweet includes a photo of her at fourteen, skinny and smiling through braces in her field hockey uniform, the text screaming, THIS IS HOW OLD TAYLOR BIRCH WAS WHEN JACOB STRANE ASSAULTED HER. I try to imagine the same line paired with the Polaroids Strane took of me at fifteen, my heavy-lidded eyes and swollen lips, or with the photos I took of myself at seventeen, standing before a backdrop of birch trees, lifting my skirt as I stared at the camera, looking like a Lolita and knowing exactly what I wanted, what I was. I wonder how much victimhood they’d be willing to grant a girl like me.”

“She flailed in spinning darkness. Up and down blurred and warped, and she was drowning- Spindly hands slammed into her chest, one wrapping around her throat as her back hit something soft and silty. The bottom. No, she wouldn't end like this, helpless as she'd been that day against the Cauldron- Lips and teeth collided with her mouth, and she screamed as the kelpie kissed her. His black tongue shoved into her mouth, tasting of foul meat. For a heartbeat, she wasn't beneath the water, but against a woodpile in the human lands, Tomas's hard mouth crashing into hers, his hands pawing at her- Nesta struggled to pull her head away, to free her mouth, but air filled her lungs. As if the kelpie had breathed into her. As if he wanted her alive a little longer, to prolong her pain. The kelpie withdrew, and Nesta had enough sense to shut her aching, brutalised mouth, to trap in that breath he had given her. To not question how such a thing was even possible. The kelpie's hands ripped at her body, tearing away every weapon with unerring aim, as if he did not need to see in this darkness, as if those large black eyes could pick up any trickle of light like some deep-sea creature. Her entire body went stiff and unmoving, each brutal touch entitled and furious and delighting in her fear. When he had disarmed her, her lungs were burning again, and she felt that thin male body pushing her into the bottom once more as he shoved his mouth to hers. She gagged, but opened for him, letting him fill her mouth with another life-giving breath that had nothing to do with kindness. His tongue wriggled like a worm against hers, and his spindly, too-large hands ran down her breasts, her waist, and when she gagged again, fighting against her sob, his laugh puffed through her lips. He pulled away, rows of teeth ripping at her mouth as he did, and she shook when he lingered, stroking at her hair. His little prize- that was what the touch said. How he would make her suffer and beg before the end. She had escaped the monsters of the human realm only to find the same ones above the wall. Had escaped from Tomas only to wind up here, raging as she had then.”

“Well before she became famous — or infamous, depending on where you cast your vote — Loftus's findings on memory distortion were clearly commodifiable. In the 1970s and 1980s she provided assistance to defense attorneys eager to prove to juries that eyewitness accounts are not the same as camcorders. "I've helped a lot of people," she says. Some of those people: the Hillside Strangler, the Menendez brothers, Oliver North, Ted Bundy. "Ted Bundy?" I ask, when she tells this to me. Loftus laughs. "This was before we knew he was Bundy. He hadn't been accused of murder yet." "How can you be so confident the people you're representing are really innocent?" I ask. She doesn't directly answer. She says, "In court, I go by the evidence.... Outside of court, I'm human and entitled to my human feelings. "What, I wonder are her human feelings about the letter from a child-abuse survivor who wrote, "Let me tell you what false memory syndrome does to people like me, as if you care. It makes us into liars. False memory syndrome is so much more chic than child abuse.... But there are children who tonight while you sleep are being raped, and beaten. These children may never tell because 'no one will believe them.'" "Plenty of "Plenty of people will believe them," says Loftus. Pshaw! She has a raucous laugh and a voice with a bit of wheedle in it. She is strange, I think, a little loose inside. She veers between the professional and the personal with an alarming alacrity," she could easily have been talking about herself.”

“Two other highly vocal FMSF Advisory Board members are Dr Elizabeth Loftus and Professor Richard Ofshe. Loftus is a respected academic psychologist whose much quoted laboratory experiment of successfully implanting a fictitious childhood memory of being lost in a shopping mall is frequently used to defend the false memory syndrome argument. In the experiment, older family members persuaded younger ones of the (supposedly) never real event. However, Loftus herself says that being lost, which almost everyone has experienced, is in no way similar to being abused. Jennifer Freyd comments on the shopping mall experiment in Betrayal Trauma (1996): “If this demonstration proves to hold up under replication it suggests both that therapists can induce false memories and, even more directly, that older family members play a powerful role in defining reality for dependent younger family members." (p. 104). Elizabeth Loftus herself was sexually abused as a child by a male babysitter and admits to blacking the perpetrator out of her memory, although she never forgot the incident. In her autobiography, Witness for the Defence, she talks of experiencing flashbacks of this abusive incident on occasion in court in 1985 (Loftus &Ketcham, 1991, p.149) In her teens, having been told by an uncle that she had found her mother's drowned body, she then started to visualize the scene. Her brother later told her that she had not found the body. Dr Loftus's successful academic career has run parallel to her even more high profile career as an expert witness in court, for the defence of those accused of rape, murder, and child abuse. She is described in her own book as the expert who puts memory on trial, sometimes with frightening implications. She used her theories on the unreliability of memory to cast doubt, in 1975, on the testimony of the only eyewitness left alive who could identify Ted Bundy, the all American boy who was one of America's worst serial rapists and killers (Loftus & Ketcham, 1991, pp. 61-91). Not withstanding Dr Loftus's arguments, the judge kept Bundy in prison. Bundy was eventually tried, convicted and executed.”

“Making someone feel obligated, pressured or forced into doing something of a sexual nature that they don't want to is sexual coercion. This includes persistent attempts at sexual contact when the person has already refused you. Nobody owes you sex, ever; and no means no, always.”

“No amount of me trying to explain myself was doing any good. I didn't even know what was going on inside of me, so how could I have explained it to them?”

“A plain, brown paper-wrapped package came in the mail recently. Upon opening it, I saw that it was a patchwork quilt about four feet by five feet. Many little scraps of cloth, carefully joined by loving hands. Two squares have suggestions of a black cassock and Roman white collar. The maker of the quilt states, “In its variety, I feel it denotes confusion and the world “mixed” up. There are dark spots for the dark times and bright squares, so, hopefully, some good and brightness will come in the future. The other pieces of cloth were of happy times, mothers and children, peaceful settings, happy things.” A note inside stated that she felt we were “scraps,”—the “scraps” that the abusive priests treated us like. They would use us as a scrap is used and then simply toss us aside. I was moved to tears. Holding it in my hands, I could almost feel others' pain and suffering, as I touched each panel. It is a magnificent work, worthy of a prize. I was deeply humbled by the receipt of the quilt. This woman got it; she really got it. This woman got it; she really got it. She has a deeper understanding of what we have gone through. It is rare.”

“In court the next morning I sat at a table in the judge’s chambers. On the other side of the table, close enough for me to reach across and touch him, sat Ted Bundy. He’s adorable, I thought, surprised at my first impression, because I’d pictured him in my mind as brooding, dark, intense disdain (p. 83). (Loftus testified as a defense expert for Ted Bundy in 1976, Bundy was found guilty of aggravated kidnapping)”

“The thought had occurred to me as I was flying to Salt Lake City earlier that day that Ted Bundy might offer to let me stay in his apartment” (p. 74). (Loftus testified as a defense expert for Ted Bundy in 1976)”

“Mungkinkah engkau tidak di ruangan ini, Ibu? Apakah Ayah masih sakit? Hidungnya pun terus bergerak ke sana ke mari, mencari-cari bau yang dikenalnya, bau dada yang hangat penuh susu, bau matahari dan hujan rintik di atas rumput. Namun hidungnya tak bisa menangkap bau itu. Yang dapat ditangkapnya hanya bau tubuhnya yang meringkuk di tempat duduknya dan luka yang menganga di antara kedua pahanya. Bau nanah dan darah dan bau busuk dan amis nafas dan keringat sepuluh lelaki, yang tanda-tanda goresan kukunya masih ada di tubuhnya, dengan suara-suara kasar mereka, ludah mereka dan bunyi mereka mendengus. Salah seorang dari kesepuluh laki-laki itu, ketika masih menindihnya, berkata: Beginilah caranya kami menyiksa engkau perempuan -- kami rampas sesuatu yang paling berharga yang kau punyai. Tubuhnya yang berada di bawah tubuh laki-laki itu sedingin mayat, tapi ia mampu membuka mulutnya dan berkata: Kalian tolol! Sesuatu yang paling berharga yang kupunyai bukan yang terletak di antara kedua tungkaiku ini. Kalian semua tolol. Dan yang paling tolol di antara kalian semua adalah dia yang memimpin kalian.”

“The hostility and venomous response the topic of sexual trauma and rape in the military brings up, especially with men from my Era, is revealing. This opposition speaks to their guilt and toward the truth that stays hidden.”

“Je suis furieuse contre une société qui m'a éduquée sans jamais m'apprendre à blesser un homme s'il m'écarte les cuisses de forces, alors que cette même société m'a inculqué l'idée que c'était un crime dont je ne devais pas me remettre. Et je suis surtout folle de rage qu'en face de trois hommes, une carabine et piégée dans une forêt dont on ne peut s'échapper en courant, je me sente encore aujourd'hui coupable de ne pas avoir eu le courage de nous défendre avec un petit couteau.”

“We live in a world in which women are battered and are unable to flee from the men who beat them, although their door is theoretically standing wide open. One out of every four women becomes a victim of severe violence. One out of every two will be confronted by sexual harassment over her lifetime. These crimes are everywhere and can take place behind any front door in the country, every day, and barely elicit much more than a shrug of the shoulders and superficial dismay.”

“Truth: Rape does indeed happen between girlfriend and boyfriend, husband and wife. Men who force their girlfriends or wives into having sex are committing rape, period. The laws are blurry, and in some countries marital rape is legal. But it still is rape.”

“Why Is It So Important to Remember? When you were abused, those around you acted as if it weren’t happening. Since no one else acknowledged the abuse, you sometimes felt that it wasn’t real. Because of this you felt confused. You couldn’t trust your own experience and perceptions. Moreover, others’ denial led you to suppress your memories, thus further obscuring the issue. You can end your own denial by remembering. Allowing yourself to remember is a way of confirming in your own mind that you didn’t just imagine it. Because the person who abused you did not acknowledge your pain, you may have also thought that perhaps it wasn’t as bad as you felt it was. In order to acknowledge to yourself that it really was that bad, you need to remember as much detail as possible. Because by denying what happened to you, you are doing to yourself exactly what others have done to you in the past: You are negating and denying yourself.”

“Stanford was offering $150,000 total, which would cover therapy for my sister and me for a handful of years. Victims receive heat when given any sum. Few acknowledge that healing is costly. That we should be allocating more funds for victims, for therapy, extra security, potential moving costs, getting back on their feel, buying something as simple as court clothes. As Michele pointed out, Preventing assault is so much cheaper than trying to address it after the fact.”

“Bit by bit, Dr. Driscoll helped me to peel away the layers of protection I had built up over the years. The process was not that unlike the peeling of an onion, which also makes us cry. It has been a painful journey, and I don't now when it will end, when I can say, “OK, it's over.” Maybe never. Maybe sooner than I know. I recently told Dr. Driscoll that I feel the beginnings of feeling OK, that this is the right path.”

“The worst part is that I want to turn this into a parable. I want to echo a rallying cry of inspiration that sings, Women, we are not alone; Women, these men do not defeat us; Women, these men do not define us; Women, I feel what you feel; Women, we, together, are strong, and for all the loud voices that said no or that didn’t have the freedom to but who still said 'please stop' or 'not right now' or 'I don’t know' or 'I don’t like that' which are all the same goddamn thing, to all the women who said no, you are not to blame for his hard, hungry hands, whether they came at you like raging fists or whether they gripped your face softly, at first, smiling at it and inviting you into the night, only later for you to meet the fingernails and full-weighted back of his hand to keep you there and press you down; to all the women who said no, you are not to blame; to all the women who feel ashamed, you are still the goddess and his hungry hands could not defile you more than mortals could defile a god; to all the women who feel sorry, you did not sin; to all the women who feel angry, I share your rage; to all the women who are too tired to feel rage, to all the women who feel empty, who feel blank, who feel Nothing, who feel small, I feel that most of all, too.”

“I want to write a thinkpiece about what you did to me. I want to write a critical analysis about the way you put your hands to my throat, the way you threw me against the partition wall. I want to extract a dose of worldly wisdom for all women to sap the power from that pain and into abstraction so we can all live again; I want what you did to be a statistic, I want you to be a memory, I don’t want you to be those hands on my throat.”

“It's how we should start reframing the dialogue around sexual violence. Discussion that fixates on the victims and survivors only succeeds in erasing the perpetrators. If the majority of perpetrators are known to their victims, it stands to reason that they move in the same communities we do. And if university students in particular are at risk of being sexually assaulted (which they are), then the question is an essential one: Which one of you raped us?”

“Rape. It brings with it connotations, assumptions, a whole steamer trunk full of other people's ideas of it, because other people only know it as a word. A concept that's discussed, argued, demonized. If you actually know what it is, if you live it and experience it and know what it is beyond a word, you have to carry that word with you. You're now 'rape victim', 'rape survivor'. Your identity is attached permanently to a word you hate.”

“Victims of rape and sexual assault are mollycoddled by the press. We are perpetually infantilised by commentators, journalists, and the public alike. People who haven’t experienced rape (or sexual abuse of any kind) find the idea of survivors having great sex lives and moving forward triumphantly – worrying. It doesn’t quite fit with their perception of us and how they understand victims of sexual violence. In most cases, people prefer to stereotype survivors – viewing them as downtrodden victims but often this doesn’t align with the actual reality.”