Abuse Sexual Abuse Quotes

#1. Many survivors insist they're not courageous: 'If I were courageous I would have stopped the abuse.' 'If I were courageous, I wouldn't be scared'... Most of us have it mixed up. You don't start with courage and then face fear. You become courageous because you face your fear.

Laura Davis

#2. So, although my story is sometimes ugly, it's also beautiful.

Niki Krauss

#3. In the tunnel where I was raped, a tunnel that was once an underground entry to an amphitheater, a place where actors burst forth from underneath the seats of a crowd, a girl had been murdered and dismembered. I was told this story by the police. In comparison, they said, I was lucky.

Alice Sebold

#4. At 31 years of age, Fred West was a big man trapped in a little man's body. He thought himself to be a gynecologist and Warren Beatty look-a-like all rolled into one ... the surgeon and the stud.

Stephen Richards

#5. Domestic violence is any behavior involving physical, psychological, emotional, sexual or verbal abuse. It is any form of aggression intended to hurt, damage, or kill an intimate person.

Asa Don Brown

#6. No matter what tight corner I was in, I was capable of getting myself out of it ... not God!

Stephen Richards

#7. That high pitch scream emitted by Rose made me wince! Her ear bursting howls would stun me into silence as much as it silenced the eldest child in their home, eight-year-old Anna-Marie.

Stephen Richards

#8. When abstinence curricula contain information about sexual abuse or assault (though they often don't), the message is similar: The onus of preventing sexual assault is on girls, not on men.

Jessica Valenti

#9. I assumed he knew that your coach was abusing you. I realized in the limo that he didn't."
For a moment, there is only silence. When Damien speaks, his words are ice cold. "He knew.

J. Kenner

#10. I value and honor the way that my suffering brings me to further search and surrender.

Maureen Brady

#11. Many deeply hidden memories have come flooding back. The important message here though is that it is possible to heal and survive. Everyone has survived their own kind of emotional or mental trauma. We all have our inner fears and misreplaced feelings of guilt.

Lynette Gould

#12. Build a bridge over shame by teaching kids about sexual abuse. Give them a chance to run to us should they encounter it. Be their hero.

Carolyn Byers Ruch

#13. Sexual abuse injects poisonous lies into its victims' hearts and minds. "You're not worthy" is one of them.

Carolyn Byers Ruch

#14. I am building a healthy support system and learning to use it readily.

Maureen Brady

#15. Between 60 and 80 percent of strippers come from a background of sexual abuse.

Caitlin Moran

#16. Victim-stancing - whereby the offender claims and believes that s/he is the real victim (one of the most prevalent sophistries in the false memory controversies)

Harvey L. Schwartz

#17. I am concerned about the growing problem of sexual abuse and exploitation of our children.

Jim Ryun

#18. Some of the most effective segments are interviews with various staff members, including Aila, who works for the center's legal department. She explains the difficulties of rape prosecution, concluding that "only the survivor" can truly define justice. - Kirkus Review

Robert Uttaro

#19. Milk is for babies. Human beings are the only species that drinks milk into adulthood and besides that we prefer to drink the milk of another species (enslaved cows and goats), and we have come to consider it normal when, it is actually a pretty perverse form of sexual abuse!

Sharon Gannon

#20. All these do-gooders make it sound like you just have to repent and off you go to heaven, but what about all the atrocities the Catholic religion did to us? Who pays for that! They just took over our lives!!

Stephen Richards

#21. Out of all the piles of dirt, garbage, and shit we have been handed, we can grow a patch of daisies.

Patti Feuereisen

#22. I can't get myself to say what happened next. I cannot cope with even thinking about this let alone living with it."
"It is so degrading and I try to forget, it hurts so much because she is my mother."
- Graham talks about being sexually abused by his mother

Carolyn Ainscough

#23. I think the issue of clergy sexual abuse sparked people to look at their faith in a different way.

William P. Leahy

#24. The only sexual act that is sinful is the one that uses or abuses.

Pat Buckley

#25. The abuser's desire to abuse is not created by the child - it is there before the child appears

Carolyn Ainscough

#26. Not only do I believe children can be reliable in sexual abuse cases, I believe the vast majority of them are reliable in those cases.
Nightline: When to believe a child's word (1996)

Stephen J. Ceci

#27. Adults need to teach the children they love about sexual abuse so they know what to do if they encounter it. We need to prepare them so they know who to tell, should a violation occur, so they don't have to live with a painful secret, long into adulthood.

Carolyn Byers Ruch

#28. We have come far, but there is an ongoing battle to be fought. Many of the issues the Suffragettes were dealing with are still issues today across the globe: equal pay, parental rights, sexual abuse, etc.

Sarah Gavron

#29. This book is dedicated to all who have been affected by sexual violence.

Robert Uttaro

#30. Often times, people don't realize how much their childhood still affects them when they are an adult. Or other people don't realize the affect things still have on those they know. Other people might even say, "Get over it" or "Move on." But it's usually simply not that easy.

Lisa Bedrick

#31. If you have been raped or sexually assaulted and you have been blamed, or fear that you may be blamed, I just want you to understand this: You are not to blame. There is nothing you did to make someone hurt you, nor is there anything you could have done differently to prevent or stop it.

Robert Uttaro

#32. Fearing the unknown within myself has kept me crouching in a corner. I look to see who I am and discover much that is worthy.

Maureen Brady

#33. What pedophiles and people who have sexual desires on children lose sight of to a terrible, terrible degree - a devastating degree - is that their victims are real people who will suffer forever whatever abuses are perpetrated on them.

Jock Sturges

#34. By opening the door to my life, it is my hope and mission to shed light on the hidden wounds of abuse, to end the stigma and shame associated with abuse, and to show survivors true courage, strength, inspiration, and determination.

Erin Merryn

#35. As in so many cases of sexual abuse within the family, it is much more complicated than had it been done by a stranger.

Erin Merryn

#36. I knew I hadn't been the most innocent of victims, but I didn't deserve this. DC Smith stood and grinned at me as he thanked me and left the room, leaving me to cry and to ponder on his not very adept handling of the situation.

Stephen Richards

#37. The photographs of Iraqi prisoners being subjected to degrading and humiliating treatment by their captors, and the reports of acts of sexual abuse, physical abuse, and other acts of maltreatment shock the conscience.

Ed Markey

#38. A paedophile is someone whose sexual attraction towards children their own age did not grow with them.

Mokokoma Mokhonoana

#39. I would like to say that what Mel Phillips was doing was not sexual harassment but more sexual abuse of children, because he was doing it in a sexual manner now that I look back on it.

Tom Cole

#40. I left the court feeling sure that Rose West would never walk free again. That thought made me happy.

Stephen Richards

#41. The purpose of the book is to break the silence and stigma surrounding sexual abuse and to educate the public on how they can be greater advocates for victims. As a people, a nation and a society, we all have a part to play in curbing this issue.

Michelle Alexander

#42. Until we accept that our children have much more of a risk of being sexually abused than drowning in a pool, being struck by a car, stricken with cancer, hurt by a vaccination, or diagnosed with ebola, we contribute to a culture of panic and ignorance.

Ann Brasco

#43. Life in a shelter or on the streets puts homeless kids and youth at a higher risk for physical and sexual assault and abuse, physical illness, including HIV/AIDS

Jewel

#44. Recovery unfolds in three stages. The central task of the first stage is the establishment of safety. The central task of the second stage is remembrance and mourning. The central focus of the third stage is reconnection with ordinary life.

Judith Lewis Herman

#45. As long as fathers rule but do not nurture, as long as mothers nurture but do not rule, the conditions favoring the development of father-daughter incest will prevail.

Judith Lewis Herman

#46. It is regarded as axiomatic that parents have more power then children. This is an inescapable biological fact; young children are completely dependent on their parents or other caring adults for survival.

Judith Lewis Herman

#47. Denial is commonly found among persons with dissociative disorders. My favorite quotation from such a client is, "We are not multiple, we made it all up." I have heard this from several different clients. When I hear it, I politely inquire, "And who is we?

Alison Miller

#48. A lot of attention has been given over to the Catholic Churches sexual abuse of children in their care, but this attention seems to have been hijacked by the media and has overshadowed the many thousands of victims that endured physical abuse.

Stephen Richards

#49. Homosexuals are rarely monogamous and have as many as 300 to 1,000 sexual partners over the course of a lifetime. ... [T]he risk of sexual abuse in a homosexual household is much greater than in a heterosexual household.

Bryan Fischer

#50. I dived out of the office and I was gone ... hitting these fields like a mad March hare. This wasn't Born Free, it was RUN FREE!

Stephen Richards

#51. When I was 14-15
There was nothing to my life
but dancing and sex
I'd go to night clubs and dance
Then I'd meet someone and have sex
it was Fine and easy
nothing to do
BUT Think with my body
like a bird
I Thought I was Free
TrAcey Emin

Tracey Emin

#52. If I were free, as a physician, to say what I pleased, I would tell every abused person I see that there is an entire world out there that is nothing like the one you're living. Go discover it.

C. Kennedy

#53. One is that if women's sexuality in Africa wasn't under assault, if women were able to say no, if women weren't subject to predatory attacks by men, or predatory behavior generally, then you would have a disease in Africa called AIDS. But you wouldn't have a pandemic.

Stephen Lewis

#54. It's not easy to be optimistic and hopeful after you come to know and love some of the young victims of sexual abuse, violence, poverty, neglect, drugs, and rape. It's taking me a while to climb out of this hatred, this noxious cynicism. I'm doing my best.

M.T. Johnson

#55. I am filled with truth at my center where I once held shame.

Maureen Brady

#56. My philosophy is, "murder the rapist in your mind so you stop killing yourself." I've seen, in my lifetime, that sexual abuse has turned into self-abuse. When I kill the rapist inside of me, I will stop killing myself.

Margaret Cho

#57. Always know there are friends somewhere rooting for you. There are people you don't know, always praying for you and lifting you before God. - Jenee, from "To the Survivors".

Robert Uttaro

#58. [The incestuous father...] may be unconsciously seeking revenge against either his wife or his mother for what he considers a variety of emotional crimes against him.

Susan Forward

#59. Though it isn't obvious from the bowdlerized versions in Walt Disney , the tales are filled with murder,infanticide,cannibalism, mutilation, and sexual abuse - grimm fairy tales indeed.

Steven Pinker

#60. My goal in going public was not to put my extended family to shame, or to get back at Brian for abusing my sister and me; rather, my mission was to give a face and voice to an epidemic that society stays hushed about.

Erin Merryn

#61. Religion has the capacity to silence critical thinking and create blindness in entire groups of people. It can infect the minds of followers so completely as to allow the most egregious sexual acts against children and others to go unchallenged for centuries.

Darrel Ray

#62. Imagine, pretend, and play so you can become anyone you want to be. You don't need to be afraid.

Carolyn Byers Ruch

#63. You may experience waves of disbelief after each memory you retrieve. Whether as a phase or waves, the disbelief is usually accompanied by massive self-hate and guilt. 'How can I even think such a thing? I must really be warped,' you tell yourself.

Renee Fredrickson

#64. A son is a poor substitute for a mother.

Joseph Stefano

#65. So often parents of abused children feel helpless. When a child falls, and scrapes her knees parents can erase the hurt by kissing it and putting a Band-Aid on it, but not so with the pain of sexual abuse.

Erin Merryn

#66. Though no longer living in silence, I continued to carry pain and memories.

Erin Merryn

#67. Abuse is a parasite that feeds off hate and shame, growing in size and strength with silence.

Nikki Sex

#68. If someone would have talked in school about safe touch and unsafe touch, I believe I would have spoken up as a child and not been victimized over and over again for years, but that day never came, which is why my mission now is to protect children from the childhood I could not be protected from.

Erin Merryn

#69. Mind Your Language in the Presence of Patriachs

Q. When is rape not rape?
A. When it is your father or stepfather.

S. Caroline Taylor

#70. The horror of incest is not in the sexual act. but in the exploitation of children and the corruption of parental love. p4

Judith Lewis Herman

#71. 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.

Judith Lewis Herman

#72. Marriage,love and commitment does not give a man permission to act like Julius Caesar by pushing his partner into sexual promiscuity like a concubine for his own sexual pleasures.

Sheree' Griffin

#73. Preliminary research-most of it published outside the medical literature-indicates that a significant number of our patients have experienced some form of violence and abuse during their lifetime, including elder abuse, child abuse, gang-related violence, sexual abuse, and domestic violence.

David Schneider

#74. Fifty three per cent children in India face sexual abuse - both boys and girls - but we still feel uncomfortable talking about it. We are still hypocrites when it comes to issues like child abuse, sex or for that matter homosexuality. It is high time that we brought the issue from under the carpet.

Rahul Bose

#75. Girls are genius at getting through sexual abuse. Often the only way to get through is not to feel. And that is exactly what these fantasy worlds allow: They give girls a place to go so they don't have to be present in their violated bodies. Brilliant.

Patti Feuereisen

#76. The meaning of our lives is to justify where our bosses spent their budget.

Lisa Schaefer

#77. Who said 'please' that made you hate the word so much?"
Andrew gazed at him in silence for a minute. "I did.

Nora Sakavic

#78. There are a substantial number of actual victims - of slavery's aftermath, gay bashing, criminal assault, sexual discrimination, physical abuse - whose genuine grievances are trivialized by victim chic. That is the real tragedy. Van

Ken Wilber

#79. Hiding my pain and acting strong, afraid to cry and show my tears, I struggle with all this years later.

Erin Merryn

#80. The only secrets that are good are the ones with an ending. Keep surprises instead of secrets in your home.

Carolyn Byers Ruch

#81. My mom called Grandma today and told her we would no longer be attending family parties. My mom told her we have had enough of being blamed for something Brian did and everyone brushing it off like it was no big deal.

Erin Merryn

#82. Once you'd been with Freddie, you wouldn't go anywhere else.' (How true this was to prove.) This incessant bragging by Fred West was at best, annoying and at worst, sickening. According to him, he was God's gift to women.

Stephen Richards

#83. I have beaten people into the ground and the more they cry the more of a beating I gave them. If they don't cry, I come off, if they cry then I will beat them and beat them and beat them.

Stephen Richards

#84. Thank goodness it wasn't real sex.

Lana Cox

#85. 'I wish for a better life. I wish for food for my children. I wish that sexual abuse and exploitation in schools would stop.' This is the dream of the African girl.

Leymah Gbowee

#86. There is comfort in knowing that you don't have to pretend anymore, that you are going to do everything within your power to heal.

Ellen Bass

#87. [Sexual abuse] is such a sharp, potent topic that we really should have discussions about more openly and more often.

Rachael Taylor

#88. The silence was killing me.
And that's all there ever was. Silence. It was all I knew. Keep quiet. Pretend nothing had happened, that nothing was wrong. And look how well that was turning out.

J. Lynn

#89. He feels excited. He feels ashamed. He wants to talk to her, but he is afraid. Maybe he imagined it all. Maybe she will call him a bad name if he asks her what happened.

Naomi Alderman

#90. Feminism is built on believing women's accounts of sexual use and abuse by men.

Catharine MacKinnon

#91. Children's bodies aren't like automobiles with the assailant's fingerprints lingering on the wheel. The world of sexual abuse is quintessentiall y secret. It is the perfect crime.

Beatrix Campbell

#92. I have to find a place to hide
An island in the sea
Surrounded by a racing tide
Where I can live with me

Laurie Matthew

#93. Don't judge yourself by what others did to you.

C. Kennedy

#94. Worldview is often confused with perception; rather, it is our perception that influences our worldview.

Asa Don Brown

#95. 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!

Diane Chamberlain

#96. The initial trauma of a young child may go underground but it will return to haunt us.

James Garbarino

#97. I look upon the gift of my life as a wondrous journey.

Maureen Brady

#98. And let's stop calling them "sex offenders," as if their crimes had anything to do with sex. (Perhaps Jeffry Dahmer was a "food offender.")

Mike Lew

#99. Who will say with confidence that sexual abuse is more permanently damaging to children than threatening them with the eternal and unquenchable fires of hell?

Richard Dawkins

#100. Being a mother of two little girls, it was an absolute nightmare for me to teach them about sexual abuse.

Deepa Kumar