Childhood Sexual Abuse Quotes

“You can recognize survivors of abuse by their courage. When silence is so very inviting, they step forward and share their truth so others know they aren't alone.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Healing Insights: Effects of Abuse for Adults Abused as Children

“Survivors of abuse show us the strength of their personal spirit every time they smile.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Healing Insights: Effects of Abuse for Adults Abused as Children

“The fear of abandonment forced me to comply as a child, but I’m not forced to comply anymore. The key people in my life did reject me for telling the truth about my abuse, but I’m not alone. Even if the consequence for telling the truth is rejection from everyone I know, that’s not the same death threat that it was when I was a child. I’m a self-sufficient adult and abandonment no longer means the end of my life.”
― Christina Enevoldsen, The Rescued Soul: The Writing Journey for the Healing of Incest and Family Betrayal

“You can recognize survivors by their creativity. In soulful, insightful, gentle, and nurturing creations, they often express the inner beauty they brought out of childhood storms.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse: Tips to Change Child Abuse Effects

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

“Abuse is never contained to a present moment, it lingers across a person’s lifetime and has pervasive long-term ramifications.”
― Lorraine Nilon, Breaking Free From the Chains of Silence: A respectful exploration into the ramifications of Paedophilic abuse

“As we grow older, the riveting, dis-empowering feelings that grabbed us during moments of our abuse do not change with knowledge, awareness, or new experiences. They are locked inside until we return to release them.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Spirit Unbroken: Abby's Story

“One in four girls will experience sexual abuse by the time she is sixteen, and 48 percent of all rapes involve a young woman under the age of eighteen. It’s not surprising then, that in a society where sexual abuse of young women is rampant, many women never share their stories. They remain hidden and invisible.”
― Patti Feuereisen, Invisible Girls: The Truth About Sexual Abuse--A Book for Teen Girls, Young Women, and Everyone Who Cares About Them

“It was that culture of denial that allowed my abuse to take place to start with. Did you know that it wasn't until 1984 that the Department of Health added the category of "sexual abuse" to its list of harms that can befall children? When I was being raped and made pregnant at the age of 11, it wasn't just my own dissociative process that told me that it wasn't happening; it was society too. "We don't have a category for that. Computer says no."͏”
― Carolyn Spring, Living with the Reality of Dissociative Identity Disorder: Campaigning Voices

“The rape of a child is a violent act of contempt, not an expression of sexuality or affection.”
― Mike Lew, Gay Men and Childhood Sexual Trauma: Integrating the Shattered Self

“When we learn to recognize the unique quality of Memory-Dreams, we are empowered. The abused child within us is using them to talk to us, giving us clues for our healing.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Childhood Abuse: Tips to Change Child Abuse Effects

“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, An Unimaginable Act: Overcoming and Preventing Child Abuse Through Erin's Law

“It is acknowledged that father-daughter incest occurs on a large scale in the United States. Sexual abuse has now been included in child abuse legislation. A conservative estimate is that more than 1 million women have been sexually victimized by their fathers or other male relatives, but the true figure probably is much higher. Many victims still fear reporting incest, and families continued to collude to keep the situation secret. Issues of family privacy and autonomy remain troublesome even when incest is reported and must be resolved for treatment to be effective. " Mary de Chesnay J. Psychosoc. Nurs. Med. Health Sep. 22:9-16 Sept 1984 reprinted in Talbott's 1986 edition”
― John A. Talbott, Year Book of Psychiatry and Applied Mental Health (Volume 2008)

“We can deny our experience, but our body remembers.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Spirit Unbroken: Abby's Story

“Soul Abuse is the destruction of a victim's awareness of the strength within their soul. It stems from the abuser's intention to corrupt another's understanding of their own significance.  ”
― Lorraine Nilon, Breaking Free From the Chains of Silence: A respectful exploration into the ramifications of paedophilic abuse

“... sexual abuse by the mother is considered to he one of the most traumatic forms of abuse. In some ways it's the ultimate betrayal.”
― Cameron West, First Person Plural: My Life as a Multiple

“I want to see her naked, " Mengele said pointing to Marlene. She cried and shock. My mother flung her body in front of Marlene's and said, "You can't have her. I love her, my daughter." My father said, "Take the younger one. She's smarter, " as he pushed me over forward.
Marlene cried because father said I was smarter even though he was just trying to manipulate Mengele. The doctor's chest grew large.”
― Wendy Hoffman, The Enslaved Queen: A Memoir About Electricity and Mind Control

“So, although my story is sometimes ugly, it's also beautiful.”
― Niki Krauss, Little Girl Mended

“Saying a man had sex with a child is like saying a man had dinner with the pork chop.”
― Linda McCarriston

“Disclosures of childhood sexual abuse have frequently been discredited through the diagnosis of hysteria. In this view, women/female children were seen either as culpable seducers who were not really damaged by the sex abuse or as dramatic fantasizers projecting their own incestuous wishes onto the father. I will argue that this view pervades the false-memory movement and can be found, for example, in Gardner's work (1992).”
― Judith L. Alpert, SEXUAL ABUSE RECALLED: Treating Trauma in the Era of the Recovered Memory Debate

“Being indifferent about sexual abuse is an absolute assault on the truth of who the victim is!”
― Lorraine Nilon, Breaking Free From the Chains of Silence: A respectful exploration into the ramifications of abuse hidden behind closed doors

“In 2011 in Swansea, Wales, Colin Batley was found guilty of 35 charges relating to his role as the leader of a 'satanic cult' that sexually abused children and women, manufactured child abuse images and forced children and women into prostitution (de Bruxelles 2011).
His partner and two other women were also convicted on related charges, with one man convicted of paying to abuse a victim of the group. The groups' ritualistic activities were based on the doctrine of Aleister Crowley, an occult figure whose writing includes references to ritual sex with children. Crowley's literature has been widely linked to the practice of ritualistic abuse by survivors and their advocates, who in turn have been accused by occult groups of religious persecution. During Batley's trial, the prosecution claimed that Crowley's writings formed the basis of Batley's organisation and he read from a copy of it during sexually abusive incidents. It seems that alternative as well as mainstream religious traditions can be misused by sexually abusive groups. p38”
― Michael Salter, Organised Sexual Abuse

“...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, Victims No Longer: Men Recovering from Incest and Other Sexual Child Abuse

“To survive your abuse, you got used to reacting to others. You unlock your heart when your answers come from inside.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Spirit Unbroken: Abby's Story

“There are many times we think we aren’t able, don’t deserve, can’t imagine, wouldn’t dare, or couldn’t possibly make the choice for our Self. Keep trying. You grow stronger with each choice.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Spirit Unbroken: Abby's Story

“Sexual abuse is an experience, not a definition to be encased in; you are far greater
than any experience suffered through the insidiousness of indifference in the form of
pedophilia. Reaching out for help is not a weakness, it is strength and courage in action.
Recovery is not easy nor is it a quick process however, all souls are worth the effort
required. Who you have come to believe you are can be very divergent from who your
naturally are.”
― Lorraine Nilon, Breaking Free From the Chains of Silence: A respectful exploration into the ramifications of abuse hidden behind closed doors

“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

“Dissociation stopped any capacity for her to learn from experience, to foresee, to protect. Abby walked the path of her life unable to recognize or anticipate the quicksand of her abuse, but once there, instinct born of experience took over. Like new babies in a pool of water knowing how to kick and reach for the surface, Abby's impulses helped her swim through the trauma. In the summer after third grade, she knew phonics, cursive, and the multiplication tables as well as silence and compliance in the secret room.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Spirit Unbroken: Abby's Story

“When we don’t acknowledge vulnerable parts of our youth, they will leak out.”
― Jeanne McElvaney, Spirit Unbroken: Abby's Story

“the taste of fine-tuned rage spilling out of a mouth turned up in painted smiles pretend smiles faked smiles”
― Sumaiya Ahmed, Lost and Found