Child Abuse Survivor Quotes

#1. Healing isn't just about pain. It's about learning to love yourself. As you move from feeling like a victim to being a proud survivor, you will have glimmers of hope, pride and satisfaction. Those are natural by-products of healing.

Ellen Bass

#2. Just as much as the media portray child sexual exploitation as being a 'hidden' crime, then that is no less of a case with child physical abuse.

Stephen Richards

#3. Religion to me was only something to be used and abused, as it had done nothing for me other than give me pain. Religion for me was a method used to gain an extra bottle of wine or a nice meal.

Stephen Richards

#4. I thought when the abuse stopped I could move on with my life. Instead I am still running from Brian. The only difference is now I am running from him in my dreams.

Erin Merryn

#5. When I felt as though I had reached land, it was like I was on a deserted sandy beach, feeling isolated and afraid to share with anyone the memories that haunted me.

Erin Merryn

#6. ...there is a particular focus of the problem faced only by men. It arises from our culture providing no room for a man as victim.

Mike Lew

#7. Incest is almost always a devastating experience for
the victim.

Susan Forward

#8. I remember the pain I felt, and wonder why a man who was such an accomplished liar had to tell the truth that day.

Toni Maguire

#9. Most of our informants [incest survivors] remembered their mothers as weak and powerless, finding their only dignity in martyrdom.

Judith Lewis Herman

#10. I think repressing what happened is what saved me in my childhood. I was able to use my imagination to create happy events, but a little girl can carry only so much on her own.

Erin Merryn

#11. I was used, fucked, broken, toyed with and violated from the age of six.

James Rhodes

#12. While my sister and I were reminded we did not cause this pain, it was knowing that because we broke our silence about what had been done to us, our parents were hurting. That knowledge was hard on us.

Erin Merryn

#13. When we first begin to take power more directly, after long having kept our relationship to it underground...it is natural that we experience anxiety, even guilt, at putting ourselves first. These feeling let us know we are taking action; they do not need to stop us.

Maureen Brady

#14. I felt like I needed to comfort both the little girl inside me and my mother, assuring them that neither of them could have prevented the rape. I didn't want my mother to blame herself and I didn't want to blame the little girl inside of me for not speaking up at the age of six.

Erin Merryn

#15. When someone forces you - he unkindly borrows- he does not, can not own you- Remember your body, spirit and heart are yours and only yours, and when you start to process your sexual abuse you will get it all back.

Patti Feuereisen

#16. Closeness was the promise of suffering and pain

Alice Jamieson

#17. From spending ten years in hell and coming to this regime of kindness was a shock. It was so much of a shock, it was unbelievable. I was like an untamed animal, I couldn't accept it and I just wouldn't accept it.

Stephen Richards

#18. With regards pedophilia I have always looked on it as that ... pedophilia. I thought that one religion is no different to the other and I am now truthfully beginning to think that.

Stephen Richards

#19. I sometimes continue to see myself in split ways; it causes me trouble and contributes to a lack of satisfaction with myself.

Maureen Brady

#20. I was becoming a product of society, a hardened juvenile! Now I was becoming rebellious and hateful.

Stephen Richards

#21. 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

#22. 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

#23. 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

#24. 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

#25. If we are taken all together, we might muster some courage, but from the previous evidence it is likely that we will be taken separately.

Edna O'Brien

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

Maureen Brady

#27. 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

#28. 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

#29. 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

#30. 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

#31. I spent many years trying to make up reasons about why I had the flashbacks, memories, continuous nightmares. When I finally decided to quit trying to hide from truth, I began to heal.

Karen Marshall

#32. I lived through this horror, and no one can tell me I have to stay quiet.
"I have been silenced long enough, and I will not allow that family to silence me again. I will continue to speak out and make sure my voice is heard.

Erin Merryn

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

Stephen Richards

#34. I have avoided the fate my father planed for me, surely it is I who won not he.

Robin LaFevers

#35. 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

#36. 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

#37. 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

#38. A terrible sadness threatened to overwhelm me as I wondered how two people capable of such love for each other had eventually felt so little for the child they had produced between them.

Toni Maguire

#39. You might think the Bangkok Hilton (the nickname of a fictional prison in Bangkok) was tough, well that was paradise compared to this place!

Stephen Richards

#40. From a young boy's viewpoint this could not get any worse, especially when you were told that you belonged to the devil, and this bullying of me went on for a long time.

Stephen Richards