Growing up in a home of abuse, you struggle with the notion that you can love a person you hate, or hate a person you love. It’s a strange feeling.

As he had kissed her neck, she could not repress the feeling she was a lamb making time with a wolf.

People that hurt others, only act on a pain they feel themselves.

Once you tell your first lie, the first time you lie for him, you are in it with him, and then you are lost.

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...

There were times when I would sob until I shook, until my eyelids were so swollen that it pained me to open them, and through hiccoughs, trembling, I would hiss, don’t touch me! as he...

You’re a survivor because everyday you make a choice not to be governed by their harsh words or actions. No one has the right to take away your happiness.

This isn’t a romance. You’re not a damsel in distress and I’m not the handsome prince come to save you.

When we began researching the film on behalf of Channel 4, which had commissioned and paid for it, the response from individual child protection workers inside and outside Cleveland was universally positive. Everyone we met...

The main factor that makes leadership potentials to become abused often is ignorance. Many people can merely spell their names in alphabets, but cannot pronounce their brands!

Clouds of confusionrolled into illusionHe veils perversionforcing her coercionHer body he takeswhile she flies awayunbelievable, she’s invisible

Basically you got a guy that is cycling through the process. You are watching him relive his abuse process in front of your very eyes not as a victim, but as a perpetrator. What you...

Dear Mrs. Black: On seven prior occasions this company has denied your claim in writing. We now deny it for the eighth and final time. You must be stupid, stupid stupid, stupid!

The word “conservative” is used by the BBC as a portmanteau word of abuse for anyone whose views differ from the insufferable, smug, sanctimonious, naive, guilt-ridden, wet, pink orthodoxy of that sunset home of the...

Pipe down! I’m not going to hurt you! I just want to talk to you! This is for your own good!

Inviting someone to work for pay is a sacred privilege and a trust. It must be regarded a high honor to be able to give another person work, and neither employer nor employee should abuse...

He’s mean and crazy, and he’ll never change. All he wants is to hurt you. Leave him now before he does something even worse.” All of these people are trying to help, and they are...

When he looks at himself in the morning and sees his dirty face, he sets about washing the mirror.

Strange how mean words can return to ones thoughts, years after they’ve been callously thrown at you. They replay in your mind, spiking a sense of remembered pain. Nasty name calling can be an ugly...

The things people say of a man do not alter a man. He is what he is. Public opinion is of no value whatsoever. Even if people employ actual violence, they are not to be...

Facts do not fall in the face of discomfort.

The true test of a warrior is how your ‘stance’ holds up after any ‘circumstance’. Meaning, even after the stormiest weather, a true warrior will still reflect the brilliant rays of the magnificent sun through...

Often, our misunderstandings about love are born in disruptive family relationships, where someone was either one-up or one-down to an extreme. There is an appropriate and necessary difference in the balance of power between parents...

stars are the scars of the universe

I know that it’s easier to look at death than it is to look at pain, because while death is irrevocable, and the grief will lessen in time, pain is too often merely relentless and...

The discovery that detonated Cleveland is one of Britain’s great contributions to awareness of child abuse. In 1986 and 1987 the Leeds paediatricians Dr Jane Wynne and Dr Christopher Hobbs reported in the Lancet that...

The return of the voices would end in a migraine that made my whole body throb. I could do nothing except lie in a blacked-out room waiting for the voices to get infected by the...

bombs” in the stomach, a trick to convince survivors that their abusers monitor them continuously. The presence of an object does not mean it is capable of collecting complex information and sending it back to...

You can have a pet zebra and put that zebra into a small cage every day and tell the zebra that you love it, but no matter how you and the zebra love each other,...

He gets more verbal abuse than any coach I’ve ever seen.

What I fear most is power with impunity. I fear abuse of power, and the power to abuse.

By the time Cheryl Hersha came to the facility, knowledge of multiple personality was so complete that doctors understood how the mind separated into distinct ego states,each unaware of the other. First, the person traumatized...

I used to pray you know, pray to God that He would somehow stop it. All the nights of listening to my mother scream and things breaking. Of holding my brother and sister and listening...

Anyone entrusted with power will abuse it if not also animated with the love of truth and virtue, no matter whether he be a prince, or one of the people.

NIDA hopes to decrease the prevalence of this problem by increasing awareness and promoting additional research on prescription drug abuse. Prescription drug abuse is not a new problem, but one that deserves renewed attention.

God wants you to be delivered from what you have done and from what has been done to you – Both are equally imporant to Him.

Father-daughter incest is not only the type of incest most frequently reported but also represents a paradigm of female sexual victimization. The relationship between father and daughter, adult male and female child, is one of...

The toxic behaviors were there before you decided to enter into relationships with them. The signs were there. You may have chosen to look the other way, but the signs were there.—Psychotherapist from Type 1...

because it means they really like you,” an approach that prepares both boys and girls to confuse love with abuse and socializes girls to feel helpless.

IN ONE IMPORTANT WAY, an abusive man works like a magician: His tricks largely rely on getting you to look off in the wrong direction, distracting your attention so that you won’t notice where the...

In general, the more dysfunctional the family the more inappropriate their response to disclosure. Never expect a sane response from an insane system.

There are many who don’t wish to sleep for fear of nightmares. Sadly, there are many who don’t wish to wake for the same fear.

Social anxiety results from being around people who are resolutely opposed to who you are.

Will you be able to touch me again without thinking about Sean? I don’t want you to be disgusted by me.

I remember the pain I felt, and wonder why a man who was such an accomplished liar had to tell the truth that day.

It is now apparent that a concerted and forceful program of election-day fraud and abuse was enacted with either the leadership or cooperation of governmental authorities.

I stared, like always. A tree in the Petrified Forest. I looked down at my hands and feet and ordered them to move, only they wouldn’t.

We have to begin by addressing the underlying causes of exclusion and abuse.

I became skilled at covering my tracks, filling in the blanks. Sometimes the blanks were never filled. At other times, I would recall places where I had been or things I had done as if...

The Airlines lady who travels in the same compartment as us day after day, has bruises on her arms and face today and her eyes keep welling, but no one asks her why. Our eyes...