Ritualistic Abuse Quotes

Our comfort in theological traditions should never usurp our desire for spiritual Truth. If we vigorously pursue the rituals rather than a relational experience with God then we've missed His message entirely. ~ Jason Versey

My view is that the false memory campaign is a spent force. It failed to realize its key goals, failed to renew itself and has largely faded away. Of course, the false memory campaign has left behind the sedimentation of doubt and disbelief that we will have to keep chipping away at. However it is important to recognise that we are witnessing an increasing, not decreasing, number of investigations and prosecutions for cases of organised and ritual abuse. Adults and children who disclose sexual abuse are more likely to be believed now than they were ten or twenty years ago, and that includes victims who describe organised and ritual abuse. ~ Michael Salter

I reflected on other victims I had met and how they were raped right on the altars of their own churches. Some of them were altar boys, and they were abused before or after mass. An altar boy walked right in front of us as we sat there. I began to shake, sweat, and become very uneasy. I felt frozen in my seat. ~ Charles L. Bailey Jr.

Chapter 4,'Organised abuse and the pleasures of disbelief', uses Zizek's (1991) insights into cite political role of enjoyment to analyse the hyperbole and scorn that has characterised the sceptical account of organised and ritualistic abuse. The central argument of this chapter is that organised abuse has come to public attention primarily as a subject of ridicule within the highly partisan writings of journalists, academics and activists aligned with advocacy groups for people accused of sexual abuse. Whilst highlighting the pervasive misrepresentations that characterise these accounts, the chapter also implicates media consumers in the production of ignorance and disdain in relation to organised abuse and women's and children's accounts of sexual abuse more generally. ~ Michael Salter

The entire affective world, constructed over the years with utmost difficulty, collapses with a kick in the father's genitals, a smack on the mother's face, an obscene insult to the sister, or the sexual violation of a daughter. Suddenly an entire culture based on familial love, devotion, the capacity for mutual sacrifice collapses. Nothing is possible in such a universe, and that is precisely what the torturers know ... From my cell, I'd hear the whispered voices of children trying to learn what was happening to their parents, and I'd witness the efforts of daughters to win over a guard, to arouse a feeling of tenderness in him, to incite the hope of some lovely future relationship between them in order to learn what was happening to her mother, to get an orange sent to her, to get permission for her to go to the bathroom. ~ Jacobo Timerman

It's better to look at a black and white world, rather than black and blue. ~ Anthony Liccione

It will be found an unjust and unwise jealousy to deprive a man of his natural liberty upon the supposition he may abuse it. ~ George Washington

It is an abuse of power, when you are President of the United States, to use the White House to single out a single news organization, and castigate them and try to delegitimize them. ~ Monica Crowley

Blind obedience is itself an abuse of human morality. It is a misuse of the human soul in the name of religious commitment. It is a sin against individual conscience. It makes moral children of the adults from whom moral agency is required. It makes a vow, which is meant to require religious figures to listen always to the law of God, beholden first to the laws of very human organizations in the person of very human authorities. It is a law that isn't even working in the military and can never substitute for personal morality. ~ Joan D. Chittister

I wanted to write something from a child's viewpoint ... Five of the characters I have played in movies have either been abused or became abusers, themselves, and I just kind of felt like there was a need. ~ Meg Tilly

Only the sufferers of injustice can realize its intensity - Iman Musa Al-Kazim ~ Abu Mohammed Al H Bin Shu'ba Al Harrani

No one can deny that much of our modern advertising is essentially dishonest; and it can be maintained that to lie freely and all the time for private profit is not to abuse the right of free speech, whether it is a violation of the law or not. But again the practical question is, how much lying for private profit is to be permitted by law? ~ Carl L. Becker

There is this to be said in favor of drinking, that it takes the drunkard first out of society, then out of the world. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

My pain has always deserved a voice and I will not deny it that, but I won't devote my life to it either. ~ Trista Mateer

How do you tell someone it's surprisingly easy to surrender to horror once you accept there's no way out? Survival is simply the art of suffering gracefully when we're up against forces out of our control. I lost my fear of dying because I expected it every minute of every day.
Tomorrows only exist in our minds. ~ J.T. Geissinger

Movements for animal rights are not irrational denials of human uniqueness; they are a clear-sighted recognition of connection across the discredited breach of nature and culture. Biology and evolutionary theory over the last two centuries have simultaneously produced modern organisms as objects of knowledge and reduced the line between humans and animals to a faint trace re-etched in ideological struggle or professional disputes between life and social science. Within this framework, teaching modern Christian creationism should be fought as a form of child abuse. ~ Donna J. Haraway

If you treated your children the way God treats his children, you'd be in jail for child abuse. ~ Eric Welch

The central attitudes driving Mr. Sensitive are:
I'm against the macho men, so I couldn't be abusive.
As long as I use a lot of "psychobabble," no one is going to believe that I am mistreating you.
I can control you by analyzing how your mind and emotions work, and what your issues are from childhood.
I can get inside your head whether you want me there or not.
Nothing in the world is more important than my feelings.
Women should be grateful to me for not being like those other men. ~ Lundy Bancroft

But both the narcissist and his partner do not really consider each other. Trapped in the moves of an all-consuming dance macabre, they follow the motions morbidly - semiconscious, desensitized, exhausted, and concerned only with survival. ~ Sam Vaknin

If love breaks more than a heart, maybe it's a sign and time to step out. ~ Anthony Liccione

Western governments ... will lose the war against dealers unless efforts are switched to prevention and therapy ... All penalties for drug users should be dropped ... Making drug abuse a crime is useless and even dangerous ... Every year we seize more and more drugs and arrest more and more dealers but at the same time the quantity available in our countries still increases ... Police are losing the drug battle worldwide. ~ Raymond Kendall

Creation has been taken down a very different path than We [God] desired. In your world the value of the individual is constantly weighed against the survival of the system - whether political, economical, social, or religious - any system, actually. First one person, and then a few and finally even many are easily sacrificed for the good and ongoing existence of that system. In one form or another this lies behind every struggle for power every prejudice, every war, and every abuse of relationship. The 'will to power and independence' has become so ubiquitous that it is now considered normal. ~ Wm. Paul Young

A broken and mended relationship turns out to be stronger than one that has never been broken, almost like how bones can become even stronger once broken and then healed. ~ Stephen Richards

A man in chains need not be a slave. If he has pride and self-respect he is a free man though a prisoner, and a constant danger to his jailers. Conversely, a slave who escapes is not a free man, but a runaway slave who may be caught and returned to servitude. A slave is one who accepts the identity ascribed to him by a master: You are an inferior and unworthy person and so will remain, and therefore must serve me with obedience and humility. ~ Allen Wheelis

My parents taught me the way to deal with being picked on was to be compassionate. I had to defend myself physically, but I had to be compassionate and understand the position of those abusing me. I had to figure it out and then rise above it. ~ Saul Rubinek

An absolutely devastating ridicule of all that is false, primitive, and vicious in current American life: the abuses of power, hero worship, aimless violence, materialistic obsession, intolerance, and every form of hypocrisy. ~ Terry Southern

The words with which a child's heart is poisoned, whether through malice or through ignorance, remain branded in his memory, and sooner or later they burn his soul. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I think it's child abuse to have someone in the public eye too young. Society basically values wealth and fame and power at the cost of well-being. In the case of a child, it's at the cost of someone's natural development. It's already hard enough to develop. ~ Alanis Morissette

Your Honor," the jury foreman began to read, "We the jury find in favor of the . . . ~ Mark M. Bello

Actresses require protection in their art from blind abuse, from savage criticism. Their work is their religion, if they are seeking the best in their art, and to abuse that faith is to rob them, to dishonor them. ~ Nance O'Neil

Everyone has fears, never judge someone for their fears. Until you have walked in their shoes, you must have compassion. ~ Tracy Malone

The purpose of the false self is to defend against pain - not deal with reality ~ Robert W. Firestone

The Obama administration came into Utah and said, 'We're not going to listen to what the U.S. Supreme Court said. 'We, the federal government, are going to recognize marriages in the state of Utah and Utah state law explicitly does not recognize as marriage,' and that was really, in my view, an abuse of power. ~ Ted Cruz

Most people do not go to the dentist until they have a toothache; most societies do not reform abuses until the victims begin to make life uncomfortable for others. ~ Charles Issawi

The second factor helping to bring the dissociative disorders back into the mainstream was the Vietnam War. For sociological reasons originating outside psychology and psychiatry, the Vietnam War and the posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that arose from it were not forgotten when the veterans returned home, as had been the case in the two world wars and the Korean War. The realization that real, severe trauma could have serious long-term psychopathological consequences was forced on society as a whole by Vietnam. Once this principle was accepted, it as a short leap to the conclusion that severe childhood trauma might have serious sequelae lasting into adulthood. ~ Colin A. Ross

By characterizing the use of illegal drugs as quasi-legal, state-sanctioned, Saturday afternoon fun, legalizers destabilize the societal norm that drug use is dangerous. They undercut the goals of stopping the initiation of drug use to prevent addiction ... Children entering drug abuse treatment routinely report that they heard that 'pot is medicine' and, therefore, believed it to be good for them. ~ Andrea Barthwell

But if he is angry at the world for doing him harm, why does he take it out on his loving partner? Couldn't he just as readily express his rage by playing racquetball or pounding pillows. His ideas about her role seem paradoxical. On the one hand, the narcissistic husband has vested his wife with tremendous power. She is necessary for his self-repair, but instead of valuing her and seeking comfort in her arms, he beats and humiliates her. Because he sees her as available to meet any and all of his needs, he releases his rage and any self-hate at her; such an act helps him ultimately feel powerful again, making him realize he is not weak and shattered.
When the narcissistic man eels the terror and rage associated with his own internal fragmentation, his outburst restores his sense of power and control. He turns the anger expanding within him away from himself, toward his wife. He insists that she's the defective one, she's to blame, because she has not met his needs. Such acts of externalization are key to the NPD batterer. His violent behavior restores his self-esteem. He believes that his actions are not his fault; he is just trying to take care of himself. ~ Susan Weitzman