Victims Quotes

“Blame is a Defense Against Powerlessness

Betrayal trauma changes you. You have endured a life-altering shock, and are likely living with PTSD symptoms— hypervigilance, flashbacks and bewilderment—with broken trust, with the inability to cope with many situations, and with the complete shut down of parts of your mind, including your ability to focus and regulate your emotions.

Nevertheless, if you are unable to recognize the higher purpose in your pain, to forgive and forget and move on, you clearly have chosen to be addicted to your pain and must enjoy playing the victim.

And the worst is, we are only too ready to agree with this assessment! Trauma victims commonly blame themselves. Blaming oneself for the shame of being a victim is recognized by trauma specialists as a defense against the extreme powerlessness we feel in the wake of a traumatic event. Self-blame continues the illusion of control shock destroys, but prevents us from the necessary working through of the traumatic feelings and memories to heal and recover.”
― Sandra Lee Dennis

“Some people live their lives being perpetual victims and finger pointers. To anyone who points a finger at someone else and lays all the blame at their feet instead of taking responsibility for their own behavior, I would say, "I see that finger and you know where you can put it?”
― Donna Lynn Hope

“Most women are all too familiar with men like Calvin Smith. Men whose sense of prerogative renders them deaf when women say, "No thanks," "Not interested," or even "Fuck off, creep.”
― Jon Krakauer, Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town

“If we could only get rid of consciousness. What makes mankind tragic is not that they are the victims of nature, it is that they are conscious of it. To be part of the animal kingdom under the conditions of this earth is very well--but as soon as you know of your slavery, the pain, the anger, the strife--the tragedy begins. We can't return to nature, since we can't change our place in it. Our refuge is in stupidity [...] There is no morality, no knowledge, and no hope; there is only the consciousness of ourselves which drives us about a world that [...] is always but a vain and floating appearance.”
― Joseph Conrad

“Of all the parts of your body, be most vigilant over your index finger, for it is blame-thirsty. A pointed finger is a victim’s logo.”
― Joseph Brodsky

“Those who were molested or beaten as children or teenagers might later be vulnerable to sexual abuse or violence, because their natural impulses to protect themselves and protest (physical and verbal) were extinguished. Expectation of hurtful treatment by others or one's own failed capabilities can stubbornly persist despite overwhelming evidence that such is no longer the case.”
― Babette Rothschild

“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

“Victims are members of society whose problems represent the memory of suffering, rage, and pain in a world that longs to forget.”
― Bessel A. van der Kolk, Traumatic Stress: The Effects of Overwhelming Experience on Mind, Body, and Society

“over and over victims are blamed for their assaults. and when we imply that victims bring on their own fates - whether to make ourselves feel more efficacious or to make the world seem just - we prevent ourselves from taking the necessary precautions to protect ourselves. Why take precautions? We deny the trauma could easily have happened to us. And we also hurt the people already traumatized. Victims are often already full of self-doubt, and we make recovery harder by laying inspectors blame on them.”
― Anna Salter, Predators: Pedophiles, Rapists, and Other Sex Offenders

“Our society needs criminals like Wolfgang Priklopil in order to give a face to the evil that lives within and to split it off from ... It needs the images of cellar dungeons so as not to have to see the many homes in which violence rears its conformist, bourgeois head. Society uses the victims of sensational cases such as mine in order to divest itself of the responsibility for the many nameless victims of daily crimes, victims nobody helps – even when they ask for help.”
― Natascha Kampusch, 3,096 Days

“It was words and reading that had made me quiet, and being quiet had made me a mark.”
― Charles Blow, Fire Shut Up in My Bones: A Memoir

“*Prostitution* is a euphemism for rape incidents that the victim and the economy profits from.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, The Selfish Genie: A Satirical Essay on Altruism

“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)

“There was no feeling of dedication because it was absolutely involuntary. I do not doubt that if the Marines had asked for volunteers for an impossible campaign such as Guadalcanal, almost everyone now fighting would have stepped forward. But that is sacrifice; that is voluntary. Being expended robs you of the exultation, the self-abnegation, the absolute freedom of self-sacrifice. Being puts one in the role of victim rather than sacrificer, and there is always something begrudging in this. I doubt if Isaac would have accepted the knife of his father, Abraham, entirely without reproach; yet, for the same master, he would have gladly gone to his death a thousand times. The world is full of the sacrifice of heroes and martyrs, but there was only one Victim.”
― Robert Leckie, Helmet for My Pillow

“What differentiates victors and victims are visions and vigor. Victims won't get the vim to step out of their situations.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Ladder

“Her eyes bled from venomous anger...
Her flower had been gruesomely deflowered...
Her life had slowly turned into a blunder...
There was no more thinking further....

She would rather become a Foetus murderer
Than end up a "hopeless" mother....
Of course, she found peace in the former
Until later years of emotional trauma
Oh, the foetus hunt was forever!

The only thing you should abort is the thought of aborting your baby. Stop the hate and violence against innocent children.”
― Chinonye J. Chidolue

“[T]hat's the way of torturers of every age, to put the blame on the victim, especially when he strikes back.”
― Orson Scott Card

“Treating Abuse Today (Tat), 3(4), pp. 26-33
Freyd: I see what you're saying but people in psychology don't have a uniform agreement on this issue of the depth of -- I guess the term that was used at the conference was -- "robust repression."

TAT: Well, Pamela, there's a whole lot of evidence that people dissociate traumatic things. What's interesting to me is how the concept of "dissociation" is side-stepped in favor of "repression." I don't think it's as much about repression as it is about traumatic amnesia and dissociation. That has been documented in a variety of trauma survivors. Army psychiatrists in the Second World War, for instance, documented that following battles, many soldiers had amnesia for the battles. Often, the memories wouldn't break through until much later when they were in psychotherapy.

Freyd: But I think I mentioned Dr. Loren Pankratz. He is a psychologist who was studying veterans for post-traumatic stress in a Veterans Administration Hospital in Portland. They found some people who were admitted to Veteran's hospitals for postrraumatic stress in Vietnam who didn't serve in Vietnam. They found at least one patient who was being treated who wasn't even a veteran. Without external validation, we just can't know --

TAT: -- Well, we have external validation in some of our cases.

Freyd: In this field you're going to find people who have all levels of belief, understanding, experience with the area of repression. As I said before it's not an area in which there's any kind of uniform agreement in the field. The full notion of repression has a meaning within a psychoanalytic framework and it's got a meaning to people in everyday use and everyday language. What there is evidence for is that any kind of memory is reconstructed and reinterpreted. It has not been shown to be anything else. Memories are reconstructed and reinterpreted from fragments. Some memories are true and some memories are confabulated and some are downright false.

TAT: It is certainly possible for in offender to dissociate a memory. It's possible that some of the people who call you could have done or witnessed some of the things they've been accused of -- maybe in an alcoholic black-out or in a dissociative state -- and truly not remember. I think that's very possible.

Freyd: I would say that virtually anything is possible. But when the stories include murdering babies and breeding babies and some of the rather bizarre things that come up, it's mighty puzzling.

TAT: I've treated adults with dissociative disorders who were both victimized and victimizers. I've seen previously repressed memories of my clients' earlier sexual offenses coming back to them in therapy. You guys seem to be saying, be skeptical if the person claims to have forgotten previously, especially if it is about something horrible. Should we be equally skeptical if someone says "I'm remembering that I perpetrated and I didn't remember before. It's been repressed for years and now it's surfacing because of therapy." I ask you, should we have the same degree of skepticism for this type of delayed-memory that you have for the other kind?

Freyd: Does that happen?

TAT: Oh, yes. A lot.”
― David L. Calof

“There is always a solution to any problem.
Find opportunities in any circumstance. Never become a victim.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“The food chain has victims at both ends: even rapists and murderers need someone to look down on, and kid killers will do nicely.”
― Michael Marshall, The Straw Men

“We are not killers,” Gideon says.

“In my experience everyone is a killer.” Baz’s gray eyes go cold. He leans back against the wall. “Or a victim. Some people just need a little coaxing to choose a side.”
― Paula Stokes

“Only the sufferers of injustice can realize its intensity - Iman Musa Al-Kazim”
― Abu Mohammed Al H Bin Shu'ba Al Harrani, Tuhaf Ul Uqoul

“It seems the only way we can avoid being the victims of change is to reconcile with the inevitable. We must never stand on the rail tracks of positive change.”
― Paul Bamikole

“Let all the green leaves be mine
as long as the trees define
shades created by their limbs
for the soil made with victims
of atrocity's vileness
to redeem the fragileness”
― Munia Khan

“Any species that devours its natural environment will eventually fall victim to the resulting silence and I call the toxicity of silence: Extinction Silence”
― Steven Magee, Curing Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity

“The menace of human trafficking continues to endure only because, there are some heartless men who are taking advantage of the lives and bodies the gullible victims get trapped into.”
― Sunday Adelaja

“I advise people to be careful about taking advice from long term Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity (EHS) victims. If they have had it for decades and have not cleared it up, then you can discount what they have to say regarding curing the condition. However, they are an excellent resource on the biological harm of electromagnetic fields (EMF), EMF avoidance and low EMF products.”
― Steven Magee, Curing Electromagnetic Hypersensitivity

“...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

“There's something about Betty, like she's a great big empty space waiting to suck in trouble. There'll always be a story.... One of these days Betty's going to get up and find a line of starving Africans outside her door. You can depend on it.”
― Laurie Graham, The Future Homemakers of America

“Most often we are victims by our own choice.”
― Debasish Mridha