Sexual Abuse Victims Quotes & Sayings

You're too sensitive' victims of sexual abuse are told over and over by those whose reality depends on being insensitive. Most adults who have been in the victim role cringe when anyone tells them they are sensitive. In fact, sensitivity is a lovely trait and one to be cherished in any human being. — Renee Fredrickson

I knew I hadn't been the most innocent of victims, but I didn't deserve this. DC Smith stood and grinned at me as he thanked me and left the room, leaving me to cry and to ponder on his not very adept handling of the situation. — Stephen Richards

Children who are victimized through sexual abuse often begin to develop deeply held tenets that shape their sense of self: 'My worth is my sexuality. I'm dirty and shameful. I have no right to my own physical boundaries.' That shapes their ideas about the world around them: 'No one will believe me. Telling the truth results in bad consequences. People can't be trusted.' It doesn't take long for children to being to act in accordance with these belief systems.
For girls who have experienced incest, sexual abuse, or rape, the boundaries between love, sex, and pain become blurred. Secrets are normal, and shame is a constant. — Rachel Lloyd

Are Child Molesters Really Just Victims Themselves?
"All victims are offenders," one professional challenged me at a conference, "and all offenders are victims. How does your work address that?"
My work doesn't address that because I don't believe there's any evidence for that assertion. Obviously, not all victims are offenders, but it is also likely that most offenders weren't victims. The studies that find a high proportion of child molesters who were victims of child sexual abuse themselves are almost always based on self-report, and even there, study results differ dramatically. Studies show the number of child molesters who were themselves molested as children ranges from 22 percent in some studies to 82 percent in others.[101] — Anna C. Salter

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

Most kids who left or got kicked out of the FLDS ran into very real, very debilitating issues. Boys and girls who had lived all their lives to please their families, church, and Prophet were cut from family ties with no education. Ninety percent or more of them wound up heavily involved in drugs, alcohol, promiscuity, and prostitution, or as the victims of some kind of physical, emotional, or sexual abuse. I — Rebecca Musser

Here's my theory: If a person gets worldwide fame at a young age, they're emotionally frozen at that moment. For me, that's 15 to 18, so you find yourself in your mid-20s being a glorified 15-year-old. What could possibly go wrong? — Rob Lowe

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

We have an open society. No one will come and take me away for saying what I am saying. But they don't have to, if they can control how many people hear it. And that's how they do it. — Jackson Browne

Ritualistic abuse refers to organised abuse that is structured in a ceremonial fashion, often incorporating religious or mythological iconography (McFadyen et al. 1993). The ritualistic activity is typically structured by 'deviant scriptualism', in which abusive groups parody traditional religious symbols and ritual practices (Kent 1993a, 1993b). The majority of cases of ritualistic abuse involve female victims and facilitation by parents (Creighton 1993, Gallagher et al. 1996), although early research on sexual abuse in child-care arrangements emphasised the presence of ritualistic abuse in some cases (Finkelhor and Williams 1988, Waterman et al. 1993). — Michael Salter

What pedophiles and people who have sexual desires on children lose sight of to a terrible, terrible degree - a devastating degree - is that their victims are real people who will suffer forever whatever abuses are perpetrated on them. — Jock Sturges

I know I'm not a self-indulgent idiot; I also know I'm not the second coming of Deepak Chopra. If I had believed either of those, or both, as some people do when they get famous, that's when the mental illness arrives. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Sexual abuse injects poisonous lies into its victims' hearts and minds. "You're not worthy" is one of them. — Carolyn Byers Ruch

It's not easy to be optimistic and hopeful after you come to know and love some of the young victims of sexual abuse, violence, poverty, neglect, drugs, and rape. It's taking me a while to climb out of this hatred, this noxious cynicism. I'm doing my best. — M.T. Johnson

Chief Johnson has full faith on us. Which means if I can complete this task and hunt down the murderer, not only does the chief won't feel any uncertainty on Anthony and I, but the spirits of the victims can move on. It sounds silly to believe that the undead is still around, but it is the truth. And since I have a good heart, I must use it. — Simi Sunny

When you have a baby, sleep is not an option. You can't sleep. Even on vacation, you wake up at 6:30 a.m. — Jimmy Fallon

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 healing process is best described as a spiral. Survivors go through the stages once, sometimes many times; sometimes in one order, sometimes in another. Each time they hit a stage again, they move up the spiral: they can integrate new information and a broader range of feelings, utilize more resources, take better care of themselves, and make deeper changes. Allies in Healing by Laura Davis — Laura Hough

As survivors, we've been conditioned to be victims sexually. Many of us have never learned to say no or to set limits on our sexual activities ... To heal, it's important that we take control, that we make active choices concerning if, when, and how we want to explore sexuality. Especially in the beginning, you need to put your own needs about sex ahead of anyone else's. — Ellen Bass

There is no neutral position in the Lord. You are either becoming more like Christ every day or you're becoming less like Him. That's because whether you realize it or not, you're never standing still. — Stormie O'martian

Some people think it's demeaning to victims if you ever say anything out-loud about sexual abuse of children. I don't know if that's true. — Louis C.K.

...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 a series of three studies, the offenders who claimed they were abused as a child were 67 percent, 65 percent, and 61 percent without the threat of a polygraph. With polygraph (and conditional immunity), the offenders who claimed they were abused as children were 29 percent, 32 percent, and 30 percent, respectively. The polygraph groups reported approximately half the amount of victimization as children as the nonpolygraph groups did.
Nonetheless, the notion that most offenders were victims has spread throughout the field of sexual abuse and is strangely comforting for most professionals. — Anna C. Salter

There are a substantial number of actual victims - of slavery's aftermath, gay bashing, criminal assault, sexual discrimination, physical abuse - whose genuine grievances are trivialized by victim chic. That is the real tragedy. Van — Ken Wilber

A pretty wife is something for the fastidious vanity of a roue to retire upon. — Thomas Moore

The purpose of the book is to break the silence and stigma surrounding sexual abuse and to educate the public on how they can be greater advocates for victims. As a people, a nation and a society, we all have a part to play in curbing this issue. — Michelle Alexander

bread were being baked, or gold or silver purified in a furnace." Afterwards the Christians of Smyrna wish to collect his remains, desiring "to have a share in his holy flesh." Before they are allowed to do so, they have to overcome the objections of pagans and — Robert Bartlett

We need realism to deal with reality. — Slick Rick

The capacity of sex offenders for denial, rationalization, and minimization of their deviant behavior is confirmed by Salter's (1995) finding that the population she has interviewed seemed rather proud of their ability to manuipulate their victims into remaining attached and loyal to them. Salter notes that frequently child abusers target their victims by calculating their probably vulnerability relative to other children, recognizing that those already being abused by others are better prey than the never-molested children. — Harvey L. Schwartz

Hulk Hogan, you are a household word but so is garbage and it stinks when it gets old too. — Jim Cornette

SOCIETY AS COMPULSIVE AND ADDICTED Our society is highly addictive. We have sixty million sexual abuse victims. Possibly seventy-five million lives are seriously affected by alcoholism, with no telling how many more through other drugs. We have no idea of the actual impact on our economy of the billions of tax-free dollars that come from the illegal drug trade. Over fifteen million families are violent. Some 60 percent of women and 50 percent of men have eating disorders. We have no actual data on work addiction or sexual addictions. I saw a recent quotation that cited thirteen million gambling addicts. If toxic shame is the fuel of addiction, we have a massive problem of shame in our society. — John Bradshaw

I should meet many people who do not know anyone personally who has been raped or molested as a child. But I can't remember seeing a newspaper without a rape or molestation charge in it somewhere, and when I ask groups how many people know someone personally with a history of molestation, almost always, every hand in the room goes up. — Anna C. Salter

There is a pernicious notion held by many that being a submissive means being a victim or a doormat. The so-called Fifty Shades phenomenon gives this repulsive lie some very long legs, spreading it far and wide and giving it unwarranted credibility. This fallacy must be exposed for what it is. It is a despicable lie that mischaracterizes and tarnishes millions of good people living a healthy and enjoyable lifestyle. At the same time, it undermines the feminist cause, promotes rape culture, and ultimately revictimizes true victims of the very real problems of sexual abuse and violence in this country. — Michael Makai

The reduction of political discourse to sound bites is one of the worst things that's happened in American political life. — John Silber