Childhood Sexual Abuse Quotes & Sayings

You invite a time in the near future when you are no longer building your life on the unknown influences of your childhood sexual abuse. — Jeanne McElvaney

Over centuries, organised perpetrator groups have observed and studied the way in which extreme childhood traumas, such as accidents, bereavement, war, natural disasters, repeated hospitalisations and surgeries, and (most commonly) child abuse (sexual, physical, and emotional) cause a child's mind to be split into compartments. Occult groups originally utilised this phenomenon to create alternative identities and what they believed to be "possession" by various spirits. In the twentieth century, probably beginning with the Nazis, other organised groups developed ways to harm children and deliberately structure their victims' minds in such a way that they would not remember what happened, or that if they began to remember they would disbelieve their own memories. Consequently, the memories of what has happened to a survivor are hidden within his or her inside parts. — Alison Miller

Consider the following: More than 40 percent of women in the United States have likely been the victim of violence, including childhood sexual abuse (almost 18 percent), physical assault (more than 19 percent), rape (more than 20 percent), and intimate partner violence (almost 35 percent).4 Some 6 percent of all pregnant women experienced violence during their pregnancies as well.5 Despite the widespread violence against women, less than 10 percent of primary care physicians normally screen for domestic violence during routine office visits.6 Yet if the violence is not addressed, it — Christiane Northrup

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

The childhood sexual abuse taught me that my value came from sex. In adulthood, I was driven to have sex since I always felt worthless. I felt important and desired until it was over and then I felt like garbage - the same way I did after the abuse. I desperately needed to feel valued again, which led to more sex. My sex addiction only stopped when I believed that I'm valuable apart from anything I do. — Christina Enevoldsen

When we talk with our children about sexual abuse, we are not only taking a proactive step toward protecting them, we are building our relationship with them
grounded in honesty and trust. It's a win-win situation. — Carolyn Byers Ruch

: Their acts violated our trust. : The secrecy told us we were alone. : The shame swirling through our experience convinced us we didn't deserve the best for ourselves. : Our circumstances twisted our beliefs about what to expect out of life. : Surviving our unpredictable, disempowering childhood left little opportunity to explore our talents or creativity. It's been said, living through childhood sexual abuse is like living in a war zone. Each of us survived by doing the best we could. Now we have the opportunity to celebrate the child we were and all we did to reach this place in life when healing is possible. Now we get to update our information. And this will bring encouraging, empowering, joy-filled changes into our lives. Each time you go back into a memory, you have the opportunity to 'see' what you learned in that moment of trauma. When I was six-years old, playing with my doll with abandon that blocked out all other noise, I found — Jeanne McElvaney

I am empowered by self-knowledge, by ownership of my experiences, and by all aspects of myself. — Maureen Brady

I was survivor of childhood sexual abuse in therapy for dissociated trauma memories. — Jeanne McElvaney

Military population that has a disproportionate number of young people with a history of sexual abuse. One theory for this holds that military service is an easy way for young people to get out of their home, and so the military will disproportionally draw recruits from troubled families. According to a 2014 study in the American Medical Association's JAMA Psychiatry, men with military service are now twice as likely to report sexual assault during their childhood as men who never served. This was not true during the draft. Sexual abuse is a well-known predictor of depression and other mental health issues, and the military suicide rate may in part be a result of that. Killing — Sebastian Junger

Some of your childhood traumas may be remembered with incredible clarity, while others are so frightening or incomprehensible that your conscious mind buries the memory in your unconscious. — Renee Fredrickson

The mental health system is filled with survivors of prolonged, repeated childhood trauma. This is true even though most people who have been abused in childhood never come to psychiatric attention. To the extent that these people recover, they do so on their own.[21] While only a small minority of survivors, usually those with the most severe abuse histories, eventually become psychiatric patients, many or even most psychiatric patients are survivors of childhood abuse.[22] The data on this point are beyond contention. On careful questioning, 50-60 percent of psychiatric inpatients and 40-60 percent of outpatients report childhood histories of physical or sexual abuse or both.[23] In one study of psychiatric emergency room patients, 70 percent had abuse histories.[24] Thus abuse in childhood appears to be one of the main factors that lead a person to seek psychiatric treatment as an adult.[25] — Judith Lewis Herman

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

I do think a lot of sexual violence stems from experiences in childhood or at puberty. Some people become sadistic after suffering early abuse at the hands of parents, relatives or friends. But for others, the seed is planted in the formative years by the conflation of images of violence with those of sexual arousal. Magazines, TV shows and, especially, slasher movies are masters at doing this. — Park Dietz

Don't put your child at risk. Limit unsupervised one-on-one time between your child & another adult or another child. — Carolyn Byers Ruch

But then, look at me. My brain is incorrectly formed, and I'm shaped like a tube. Plus, I'm an alcoholic, a "survivor" of childhood sexual abuse, was raised in a cult and have no education. So, really, if you think about it, the only thing that separates me from the guy with the stinky foot and no teeth is a book deal and some cologne. — Augusten Burroughs

One hundred twenty-nine women with documented histories of sexual victimization in childhood were interviewed and asked about abuse history. Seventeen years following the initial report of the abuse, 80 of the women recalled the victimization. One in 10 women (16% of those who recalled the abuse) reported that at some time in the past they had forgotten about the abuse. Those with a prior period of forgetting--the women with "recovered memories"--were younger at the time of abuse and were less likely to have received support from their mothers than the women who reported that they had always remembered their victimization. The women who had recovered memories and those who had always remembered had the same number of discrepancies when their accounts of the abuse were compared to the reports from the early 1970s.

Recovered memories of abuse in women with documented child sexual victimization histories.
Journal of Traumatic Stress. 1995 Oct;8(4):649-73. — Linda M. Williams

Imagine, pretend, and play so you can become anyone you want to be. You don't need to be afraid. — Carolyn Byers Ruch

The traumatic stress field has adopted the term "Complex Trauma" to describe the experience of multiple and/or chronic and prolonged, developmentally adverse traumatic events, most often of an interpersonal nature (e.g., sexual or physical abuse, war, community violence) and early-life onset. These exposures often occur within the child's caregiving system and include physical, emotional, and educational neglect and child maltreatment beginning in early childhood

- Developmental Trauma Disorder — Bessel A. Van Der Kolk

And Ana remembered her father's words, Say no! Run! Tell me! — Carolyn Byers Ruch

I was just four when a hired teenage field hand attempted to molest me. Miraculously, I got away, and I told my dad. My father made three important choices that day: He listened to me, he believed me, and he took action. I was one of the fortunate ones
I had a childhood. — Carolyn Byers Ruch

The initial trauma of a young child may go underground but it will return to haunt us. — James Garbarino

Like Jocelyn, Survivors often think: * That's just the way I am
* I'm not lovable, that's why I keep having disastrous relationships
* I'm not very clever, that's why I didn't do well at school
* I'm a loner
* I'm a weak person
* I'm not very nice
* I was a difficult child
Many survivors find it difficult to accept that being sexually abused as a child can continue to affect them many years later. It may seem too fantastic, or too frightening an idea to believe.
David Finkelhor, an American researcher, has tried to explain how sexual abuse affects a child and leads to long-term problems. He suggests four ways in which childhood sexual abuse causes problems:
1 Traumatic Sexualization
2 Stigmatization
3 Betrayal
4 Powerlessness — Carolyn Ainscough

Coming to terms with incest is not easy. Learning to be a survivor, not a victim, gives new meaning to life — Lynette Gould

So, although my story is sometimes ugly, it's also beautiful. — Niki Krauss

Fearing the unknown within myself has kept me crouching in a corner. I look to see who I am and discover much that is worthy. — Maureen Brady

So often survivors have had their experiences denied, trivialized, or distorted. Writing is an important avenue for healing because it gives you the opportunity to define your own reality. You can say: This did happen to me. It was that bad. It was the fault & responsibility of the adult. I was - and am - innocent. The Courage to Heal by Ellen Bass & Laura Davis — Ellen Bass

Denial is commonly found among persons with dissociative disorders. My favorite quotation from such a client is, "We are not multiple, we made it all up." I have heard this from several different clients. When I hear it, I politely inquire, "And who is we? — Alison Miller

As soon as realized that I was treating MPD clients, I read the few existing books on the condition, attended a workshop at the Justice Institute, and used some sexual abuse prevention money to organize a workshop where therapists could exchange information and educate each other about dissociation. There, I learnt something that I found really shocking. Many people
suffering from MPD had been severely abused throughout their childhood years by organized groups, including Satanic and other "dark-side" religious cults. Moreover, quite a few of them were still involved in those groups, although they were not aware of their involvement, because it was other "personalities" - dissociated parts of them - who went off to the groups' rituals. I was skeptical, to say the least. — Alison Miller

Build a bridge over shame by teaching kids about sexual abuse. Give them a chance to run to us should they encounter it. Be their hero. — Carolyn Byers Ruch

It is therefore perfectly plausible that memories of childhood sexual abuse could be buried for years and then recalled, and that motivated forgetting, dissociative amnesia, or some other mechanism could account for some of the allegations in cases that Loftus has testified in. But because of the way in which the entire debate has been framed around the issue of "repression" and "recovery," these nuances have been largely ignored. — Moheb Costandi

Ritualised child sexual abuse is about abuse of power, control and secrecy. Ten years ago many people found it difficult to believe that fathers actually raped their children, yet survivors of such abuses spoke out and eventually began to be listened to and believed. Ritual abuse survivors, when they try to speak out about their experiences, face denial and disbelief from society and often fear for their lives from the abusers. — Laurie Matthew

Hiding my pain and acting strong, afraid to cry and show my tears, I struggle with all this years later. — Erin Merryn

It feels as if childhood sexual abuse or domestic abuse of women in the home has increased but actually if you ask women of 60 or 70 years old, the incidence is about the same. We just didn't know it. — Gloria Steinem

Often times, people don't realize how much their childhood still affects them when they are an adult. Or other people don't realize the affect things still have on those they know. Other people might even say, "Get over it" or "Move on." But it's usually simply not that easy. — Lisa Bedrick

...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

In my view, the spurning of DID is highly connected with knowing and not knowing about child sexual abuse. Side by side with denial of childhood trauma and of severe dissociation, is an unmistakable cognizance of dissociative processes as they are embedded in our language. We regularly say things such as, "pull yourself together", "he is coming unglued", "she was beside herself", "don't fall apart", "he's not all there", "she was shattered", and so on. — Elizabeth Howell

Many deeply hidden memories have come flooding back. The important message here though is that it is possible to heal and survive. Everyone has survived their own kind of emotional or mental trauma. We all have our inner fears and misreplaced feelings of guilt. — Lynette Gould

Sometimes I hesitate to use the term sexual abuse. It conjures up worst-case scenarios in our minds, and we think, "That will never happen to my kids." And we never begin the conversation regarding sexual abuse with our children. But one violation left in secret can cause significant pain. — Carolyn Byers Ruch

Research has also revealed that women who have developed PTSD in relation to early childhood sexual abuse often develop borderline personality disorder. Some severe cases will result in the development of dissociative identity disorder or depersonalization disorder. Patients who have been exposed to protracted and repeated sexual abuse may also develop schizophrenia simultaneously with PTSD. — John M. Duffey

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