Child Sexual Abuse Survivors Quotes

Why Is It So Important to Remember?

When you were abused, those around you acted as if it weren't happening. Since no one else acknowledged the abuse, you sometimes felt that it wasn't real. Because of this you felt confused. You couldn't trust your own experience and perceptions. Moreover, others' denial led you to suppress your memories, thus further obscuring the issue.

You can end your own denial by remembering. Allowing yourself to remember is a way of confirming in your own mind that you didn't just imagine it. Because the person who abused you did not acknowledge your pain, you may have also thought that perhaps it wasn't as bad as you felt it was. In order to acknowledge to yourself that it really was that bad, you need to remember as much detail as possible. Because by denying what happened to you, you are doing to yourself exactly what others have done to you in the past: You are negating and denying yourself. ~ Beverly Engel

During sexual abuse, children feel and incorporate the rage, pain, shame, and sense of perversion that the perpetrator is projecting. They take these feelings into the very core of themselves, and they are badly traumatized by the emotions surrounding the assault, as well as by the assault itself. ~ Renee Fredrickson

The experience of childhood sexual abuse leaves some survivors with a high tolerance for pain. Dysfunctional environments require endurance and thick skin. Child survivors sometimes have to commit to sticking things out in order to survive. This pattern of tolerance follows you into adulthood. Instead of using pain as a signal to evaluate and change direction, you may use pain as a signal to try harder. Try harder to please someone. Try harder to control your children. Try harder to be a good friend. Try harder to be successful at a job that you hate. You remain in survival mode that you picked up as a child. Your high tolerance for pain keeps you committed to dysfunctional experiences and relationships that recycle pain from the past. Sometimes, the only way out of this cycle is time in isolation to learn what peace feels like. Sometimes you have to be willing to let go of everything in order to learn how to hold onto anything. ~ Rosenna Bakari

We can ill afford to wait until we have worked through all our memories & feelings about incest before learning to rest & play. While it may seem to be a natural impulse to get to the bottom of things & purge ourselves fully, we need to regularly examine the full picture of our lives for balance along the way…Learning to rest & play is an essential part of our healing. ~ Maureen Brady

If someone thinks you're being dramatic or selfish, then they obviously haven't walked a mile in your shoes. It's not important for you to explain yourself. You get a pass here. Don't let anyone else try to saddle you with guilt or shame. If you need your space, take it. ~ Sarah Newman

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

If the abuse has taken place for a really long period of time, it becomes more and tougher and challenging as well. ~ Patricia Dsouza

Do not become an accomplice by being silent, voice up! ~ Patricia Dsouza

Abuse is a parasite that feeds off hate and shame, growing in size and strength with silence. ~ Nikki Sex

You hold the ability to choose to heal and to recuperate. This power is in your hand alone ~ Patricia Dsouza

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

Zachary notified the local newspapers and all pertinent radio and television stations. He called a press conference at the home of his client, Jennifer Tracey, to announce the filing of a major multimillion-dollar lawsuit against a major religious institution. The dye had been cast. A long, tough road lay ahead. For Zachary, Jennifer, Kenny, and Jake, there was no turning back. ~ Mark M. Bello

To forget and to repress would be a good solution if there were no more to it than that. But repressed pain blocks emotional life and leads to physical symptoms. And the worst thing is that although the feelings of the abused child have been silenced at the point of origin, that is, in the presence of those who caused the pain, they find their voice when the battered child has children of his own. ~ Alice Miller

Domestic Violence – I Deserve Respect!
As a male advocate for ending domestic abuse, Patrick believes domestic violence is not just a woman's issue, it's everyone's issue. In his moving personal memoir, I AM ME, and in his powerful presentations, Patrick describes the painful domestic verbal abuse he endured from ex-wives and the physical abuse he suffered from his first LGBT partner. To book Patrick visit his website. ~ Patrick Dati

Are we interrupting your late-morning nap, Mr. Blake?" District Court Judge Emma Pearl inquired, with a harsh tone and an insistent expression. ~ Mark M. Bello

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

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

The police still found this earlier omission in my statement hard to understand, but they weren't the ones who had been the victim of the Wests, how could they have understood? ~ Stephen Richards

Bravely, I broke the silence. I boldly shared the truth. I empowered myself to create healthy boundaries. I became a badass. I no longer tolerated being shamed, blamed, and manipulated. ~ Dana Arcuri

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

No one can carry that pain out from you nor can anyone heal for you. ~ Patricia Dsouza

In addition to reaching out for help, you will also need to reach within yourself. Your biggest ally will be your emotions. Through them, you will learn more about what really happened to you, how the abuse affected you, and what you need to do in order to heal. Your emotions will enable you to reclaim the self you long ago hid away. ~ Beverly Engel

You hold the ability to build it or ruin it. It's entirely up to you. It's definitely possible. ~ Patricia Dsouza

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

True enough, but with the number of young parishioners being molested by priests throughout the country, wouldn't the church be wise not to send young male parishioners on camping trips with potential pedophiles?" Zack pressed. He could see himself trying this case. ~ Mark M. Bello

You're capable of making your own decisions. ~ Patricia Dsouza

Whole night hanged with panic Sparking tears in those big wide eyes. ~ Patricia Dsouza

One area where this misperception has hit hard has been research on child sexual abuse. Despite an explosion of research on the issue over recent decades, most research reported in the literature is focused on girls. There is significantly less attention given to boys, and, in fact, prior to 1980 it is difficult to find any research involving males who have been sexually abused. ~ Jan L. Frayne

You are full of empathy, kindness, and caring because you very well know the value of love. ~ Patricia Dsouza

Abuse ambushed my life, I could not love myself truly and could never have a healthy relationship, they were either abused or completely impaired. ~ Patricia Dsouza

In the 1890s, when Freud was in the dawn of his career, he was struck by how many of his female patients were revealing childhood incest victimization to him. Freud concluded that child sexual abuse was one of the major causes of emotional disturbances in adult women and wrote a brilliant and humane paper called "The Aetiology of Hysteria." However, rather than receiving acclaim from his colleagues for his ground-breaking insights, Freud met with scorn. He was ridiculed for believing that men of excellent reputation (most of his patients came from upstanding homes) could be perpetrators of incest.
Within a few years, Freud buckled under this heavy pressure and recanted his conclusions. In their place he proposed the "Oedipus complex," which became the foundation of modern psychology. According to this theory any young girl actually desires sexual contact with her father, because she wants to compete with her mother to be the most special person in his life. Freud used this construct to conclude that the episodes of incestuous abuse his clients had revealed to him had never taken place; they were simply fantasies of events the women had wished for when they were children and that the women had come to believe were real. This construct started a hundred-year history in the mental health field of blaming victims for the abuse perpetrated on them and outright discrediting of women's and children's reports of mistreatment by men.
Once abuse was denied in this way, the st ~ Lundy Bancroft

Self-recovery is not a quick repair and does not take place overnight ~ Patricia Dsouza

Evidently, if support and care are devoted to an abused child at an early level of the occurrences, the long-lasting outcomes may be less cruel. ~ Patricia Dsouza

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

If you were sexually abused & could not go to your family for support, you deserve to realize that your family failed you fundamentally. Your parents did not provide a safe atmosphere of support & protection for their children, which is a parent's first responsibility. It was not your fault. ~ Patti Feuereisen

In musing on all that occurred in the course of the several years of harassment the error I decided I made, and others frequently make, is to assume that we are all academics trying to sort out intellectual issues. The False Memory Syndrome Foundation is a political organization composed primarily of individuals who have been accused of child sexual abuse and those who support and defend them, sometimes for considerable sums.
Such people are not going to be swayed by the research. They start with a fixed point of view-the need to deflect threat. That threat comes in the form of public exposure, loss of income, monetary penalties, or even in some cases incarceration. I heard a colleague say recently, in referring to the 30 or so studies that document the existence of recovered memory, "You get to the point where you wonder when is it going to be enough." It is never going to be enough if the point is not searching for the truth but protecting a particular point of view.
Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Anna C. Salter. Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998 ~ Anna C. Salter

You are unique, special and exceptional as you have made it. ~ Patricia Dsouza

your abuser tried to map your life for you. But he does not own you, and you have the freedom and the power to overcome and transcend the (negative) associations. You deserve to be happy, to be free of any feelings of shame or guilt or fear. You have the right to a completely satisfying sexual life. You are a righteous young woman. If you can get in touch with the feelings and consciously change the awful associations, you can re-map your life. ~ Patti Feuereisen

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

We are to be agents of His great upside down Kindgom, where the outcasts are listened to, the broken are given dignity, and those suffering under the weight of sexual exploitation are rescued and healed. ~ Mary E. DeMuth

.....everything unexpectedly made sense as to where some of the traits passed on inside me came from. ~ Patricia Dsouza

Abused children realize that they cannot rely on their emotions since their innocent love and trust are already crushed and betrayed. They learn that whatever the opinion they do express may be ignored or mocked. ~ Patricia Dsouza

Mia bottled all this up inside of her and just couldn't manage it any longer. Mia would feel like it was entirely her fault, what he did stay with her always. ~ Patricia Dsouza

I always thought of myself as being the unluckiest girl I knew. I was, I believed, a 'jinx' and I was 'jinxed', or so I thought! ~ Stephen Richards