Child Abuse Denial Quotes

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

Never vote for a candidate whose campaign promises include 'doing more for children. ~ Mary Pride

When I deny the seriousness of my abuse I agree with my abuser and those who wouldn't acknowledge it. When I am in denial, I have the tendency to minimize my abuse, believe the lies others have said, as well as deny it ever happened. It is important for me to remember as much detail as I can so I can trust my own perceptions of what really happened and not depend on the validations from others. ~ Patty Hite

You can be a drunk. You can be a survivor of abuse. You can be an ex-con. You can be a homeless person. You can lose all your money or your job or a husband or a wife, or the worst thing imaginable, a child. You can lose your marbles. You can be standing inside your own failure, a small sad stone in your throat, and still you are beautiful, your story is worth hearing, because you--you rare and phenomenal misfit--are the only one in the world who can tell the story the way that only you can. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

You know all that sympathy that you feel for an abused child who suffers without a good mom or dad to love and care for them? Well, they don't stay children forever. No one magically becomes an adult the day they turn eighteen. Some people grow up sooner, many grow up later. Some never really do. But just remember that some people in this world are older versions of those same kids we cry for. ~ Ashly Lorenzana

Neglect transpires when the accountable adult fails to provide sufficiently for the needs of a child. It may be deliberate and conscious cruelty, or it may be an incapability or unwillingness to care for and nurture a child. ~ Patricia Dsouza

All people cross the line from childhood to adulthood with a secondhand opinion of who they are. Without any questioning, we take as truth whatever our parents and other influentials have said about us during our childhood, whether these messages are communicated verbally, physically, or silently. ~ Heyward Bruce Ewart III

Rigidity or inflexibility can be the result of a previous history of abuse or trauma, or of an upbringing that offered a child no permission to experiment or to deviate from the family norms. Flexibility can come from the freedom of having been allowed to make one's own choices as one was growing up. ~ Jared Diamond

So what you've actually got is traumatized children. When children are traumatized that affects how they feel about themselves, which is deeply ashamed because a child always believe that it is about himself. So if I am being hurt like this, I got to be a terrible person. Or.. if I was sexually abused, why didn't I fight back, I must be a very weak person. So there's a deep sense of shame.

Then there's tremendous emotional pain that accrues from abuse and neglect. Tremendous emotional pain that is hardly possible for people to bear. Now they have to soothe their pain with substances or other compulsive behaviors.

Then the trauma itself, given that the human brain develops in interaction with the environment, shapes the brain circuitry in such a way that the person will be more likely to find relief from the drugs. So the very phisiology of the brain is affected by early trauma.

So then you take these traumatized people and you make their habit illegal... It is not illegal to drink yourself to death. It is not illegal to make yourself sick with emphyzema or lung cancer by means of cigarettes. But it is illegal to use other substances. So now you take these abused, traumatized people you place them outside the law, you put them in jails and you hound them all their lives, treating them like criminals and bad people and failures and rejects and less-than-human. And then we wonder how come they don't get better.

So.. it is a self-perpet ~ Gabor Mate

After researching, reviewing, considering, and contemplating with continued attention; I have concluded that the beast is among us. ~ A.K. Kuykendall

But the good news is, it is definitely worth it and above all, it is achievable and possible by all means! ~ Patricia Dsouza

Make peace within you now. Set free and stop battling within. Choose yourself over and over. ~ Patricia Dsouza

I alone can heal myself, I alone am responsible for it, I alone have the authority and control over my healing, I am answerable to my healing and I alone can do it. ~ Patricia Dsouza

No, justice, simple justice. We tend to forget we went to law school to pursue justice for our clients. We get so caught up in the game of the law, we forget the purpose. ~ Mark M. Bello

The abuser wants the victim to be confounded. They do not require the victim to see undoubtedly nor see things for what they are. ~ Patricia Dsouza

Don't forget that the most effective form of child abuse is giving a child everything they want. ~ Randy Alcorn

Emotional abuse can pose a threat to a person's psychological survival, particularly if that person is a child and if the emotional abuse is chronic and severe. Threat of abandonment is experienced by some as a threat to physical and/or psychological survival. This is particularly so if the victim is dependent on the person threatening abandonment, as a child may be. Incest is a form of physical and emotional abuse that threatens a child's psychological survival and sometimes even her or his physical survival. Extreme sexual or emotional abuse may produce fragmentation of identity, as in multiple personality, or psychic annihilation, as in psychosis. Threat to psychological survival can also occur, for example, when someone threatens to kill your children, when someone continues to sexually abuse your children and there is nothing you can do to stop it, or when someone prevents you from seeing your children. ~ Dee L.R. Graham

Some Survivors get angry at having to work at recovering from sexual abuse. They feel that it is unfair. They suffered all their life because of what someone else did to them: why do they have to suffer any more pain? This anger of "having" to do something is similar to the anger they felt at "having" to put up with the abuse. ~ Beverly Engel

It is possible to heal. It is even possible to thrive. Thriving means more than just an alleviation of symptoms, more than Band-Aids, more than functioning adequately. Thriving means enjoying a feeling of wholeness, satisfaction in your life and work, genuine love and trust in your relationships, pleasure in your body. ~ Ellen Bass

Few survivors experience spontaneous recall especially if they have no awareness of the abuse ever happening. Most are forced to endure months or years of fear, confusion, and doubt as their memories surface. Dreams, imagery, feelings, and physical symptoms must be painstakingly faced and pieced together into a meaningful whole that the survivor struggles to accept as reality. ~ Renee Fredrickson

The acknowledgement of having suffered evil is the greatest step forward in mental health. ~ Stefan Molyneux

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

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

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

Certainly, words can be as abusive as any blow ... When a three-year-old yells, "You're so stupid! What a dummy!" it doesn't carry the same weight as when a mother yells those words to a child ... Even if you don't physically abuse young children, you can still drive them nuts with your words. ~ Mary Blakely

In the culture people talk about trauma as an event that happened a long time ago. But what trauma is, is the imprints that event has left on your mind and in your sensations... the discomfort you feel and the agitation you feel and the rage and the helplessness you feel right now. ~ Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

Most of our informants [incest survivors] remembered their mothers as weak and powerless, finding their only dignity in martyrdom. ~ Judith Lewis Herman

I was angry about the fact that my father would beat my mother on a daily basis, that my mother would take it in turn and beat on me. I was an abused child. I was mad about all those things, very bitter and very angry. ~ Rick James

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

Research on child abuse suggests that religious beliefs can foster, encourage, and justify the abuse of children. When contempt for sex underlies teachings, this creates a breeding ground for abuse. ~ Mary Garden

Each person recovers at their own pace. Healing does not occur with a formula ~ Patricia Dsouza

There is an intensified risk for a child living in a household experiencing domestic violence, because their basic childhood requirement is not being met, in addition to the demand for care and protection by their parents. ~ Patricia Dsouza

There is child abuse, and there are such things as repressed memories. But there are also such things as false memories and confabulations, and they are not rare at all. Misrememberings are the rule, not the exception. They occur all the time. They occur even in cases where the subject is absolutely confident - even when the memory is a seemingly unforgettable flashbulb, one of those metaphorical mental photographs. ~ Carl Sagan

Woe to the man who offends a small child! ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I think the issue of clergy sexual abuse sparked people to look at their faith in a different way. ~ William P. Leahy

The more I focus my time and energy on withstanding a real life, I am able to overcome and come out victorious. ~ Patricia Dsouza

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

Many freeze types unconsciously believe that people and danger are synonymous, and that safety lies in solitude. Outside of fantasy, many give up entirely on the possibility of love. The freeze response, also known as the camouflage response, often triggers the individual into hiding, isolating and eschewing human contact as much as possible. This type can be so frozen in retreat mode that it seems as if their starter button is stuck in the 'off' position. It is usually the most profoundly abandoned child - 'the lost child' - who is forced to 'choose' and habituate to the freeze response… Unable to successfully employ fight, flight or fawn responses, the freeze type's defenses develop around classical dissociation. ~ Pete Walker

Not to take one's own suffering seriously, to make light of it or even to laugh at it, is considered good manners in our culture. ~ Alice Miller

Rose West was starting 10 life sentences with no prospect of ever being released, Fred West had gone to hell, I had got my life back and the media circus had moved on to the next big scoop. ~ Stephen Richards

Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear so don't look and they'll stay farther away than you expect they would. ~ Brian Spellman

It's easier to throw away a child who reacts to his abuse than attempt to heal his pain. ~ Dwight Edgar Abbott

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

when these little ones don't receive the love, they need in their homes, they seek attention outside. ~ Patricia Dsouza

She listens at doors and around corners. She has always had this habit. A child in danger must learn to pay more attention to the adults than a child loved and cherished. ~ Naomi Alderman