scraps” that the abusive priests treated us like. They would use us as a scrap is used and then simply toss us aside. I was moved to tears. Holding it in my hands, I could...

In a brain scan, relational pain—that caused by isolation during punishment—can look the same as physical abuse. Is alone in the corner the best place for your child?

Children are better to starve than forced into prostitution.

Dissociation is the common response of children to repetitive, overwhelming trauma and holds the untenable knowledge out of awareness. The losses and the emotions engendered by the assaults on soul and body cannot, however be...

In a nutshell, the process they [abusers in a ritual abuse group] use on survivors is designed to:break the will and personality of the person until they become as nothing… with no will of their...

We are supposed to call poison medicine and we wonder why we’re always sick.

…Cleveland was the first war over the protection of children to be fought not in the courts, but in the media…Given that most of the hearings took place out of sight of the press, the...

Work hard. “Suit yourself, then you’ll know at least one person is pleased.

Janna knew – Rikki knew — and I knew, too — that becoming Dr Cameron West wouldn’t make me feel a damn bit better about myself than I did about being Citizen West. Citizen West,...

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...

Dissociation, in a general sense, refers to a rigid separation of parts of experiences, including somatic experiences, consciousness, affects, perception, identity, and memory. When there is a structural dissociation, each of the dissociated self-states has...

It is, after all, far too easy to pinch and kick the bizarre Mormon Church; to say it’s ripe for satire and parody is to say a Catholic schoolgirl is ripe for debauchery. It’s like...

There are a range of useful and illuminating analyses of the media construction of organised abuse as it became front-page news in the 1980s and 1990s (Kitzinger 2004, Atmore 1997, Kelly 1998), but this book...

Parents who spoil their children out of ‘love’ should realize that they are performing acts of child abuse. Although there are no laws against such abuse–no man-made laws anyway–this spiritual mistreatment may result in as...

I ask you, what would you do if you could erase one bad memory and retain all that was beautiful in your life? Would you not move heaven and earth – and get loads of...

If you say there is no such thing as morality in absolute terms, then child abuse is not evil, it just may not happen to be your thing.

I am disgusted that I was often taken into their bed and told to do things to both of them. The things a decent parent wouldn’t think of. I didn’t know that having sex with...

I saw the bruises, the burns, the cuts— I knew which ones had been done to you by someone you thought you could trust. Someone you thought loved you. I knew which ones you gave...

Cheryl was aided in her search by the Internet. Each time she remembered a name that seemed to be important in her life, she tried to look up that person on the World Wide Web....

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

Meadow’s Waltz…the meadow had becomeher sanctuary of spiritoffering an escape from a painno child should ever endureforeboding clouds began…

The literature on ritualistic abuse suggests that ritualistic sexual practices with young children are a characteristic of particularly abusive groups, and that such practices typically occur alongside a diverse range of other abusive practices, such...

Forgiveness is created by the restitution of the abuser; of the wrongdoer. It is not something to be squeeeeeezed out of the victim in a further act of conscience-corrupting abuse.

I’m back in the basement of the Ascension Catholic Church, Francisco. And Little Suzie is here. She’s lying on an alter, and they’re hurting her. The bastards. They’re hurting her. There is blood all over...

When you judge other people without wanting to know the true story behind their actions, is usually when there is something inside of you that is so broken that if you found out what you...

The asylum, and later the national health service, warehoused thousands of patients made mad by the intrusions of a sexual predator. But these institutions had been dominated by the discredited Freudian fantasy that sexual abuse...

It’s hard to feel supported when you can’t tell people everything. People haven’t really got a clue what it’s like. It’s hard to trust anyone. It’s hard to believe people won’t let you down. I’m...

But protest that priests are ‘no worse’ than other groups or than men in general is a dire indictment of the profession. It is surprising that this attitude is championed by the Church authorities. Although...

Ricky just listens. He isn’t shocked. He isn’t surprised. He listens to me because he knows. He knows the shame and the guilt and the sorrow and the rage. And he does not judge me....

A child deserves to be loved but never to be maltreated.

Take off your damned wrapper! The old buffer ordered, looking intensely at her lower part. Comfort was on her knees, rubbing the old man’s dirty feet. All her plea and tears continually worsen the whole...

Some abusers organise themselves in groups to abuse children and other adults in a more formally ritualised way. Men and women in these groups can be abusers with both sexes involved in all aspects of...

Mental anguish always results from the avoidance of legitimate suffering.

But nothing in my previous work had prepared me for the experience of reinvestigating Cleveland. It is worth — given the passage of time — recalling the basic architecture of the Crisis: 121 children from...

Ethan didn’t mind his blood being taken – he just disliked the fact that it had to be sucked through a needle in order to do it.

Those who were molested or beaten as children or teenagers might later be vulnerable to sexual abuse or violence, because their natural impulses to protect themselves and protest (physical and verbal) were extinguished. Expectation of...

I Want to ShoutLeave me alone!What’s wrong with you?Don’t you remember who I am? Who you are?This is not a father’s love! I want to scream, Can’t you see what you are doing to me?...

Early relational trauma results from the fact that we are often given more to experience in this life than we can bear to experience consciously. This problem has been around since the beginning of time,...

No human being should be maltreated under any circumstances. We are all wonderful creation of God. May we affectionately love one another.

As mandatory reporting laws and community awareness drove an increase its child protection investigations throughout the 1980s, some children began to disclose premeditated, sadistic and organised abuse by their parents, relatives and other caregivers such...

Escape from reality. In some instances, dissociation induces people to imagine that they have some kind of mastery over intractable environmental difficulties. Dissociation is often implicated in magical thinking or self-induced trance states. This aspect...

What I’ve always taken away from his words is the sense that we all have something that confines us, that seeks to define us, label us, belittling us in the process, shortchanging our potential. Can...

I used to teach at an abused children’s home. I told the kids, “You all have a manure pile of memories. Nothing you can do about that. Now you can drown in the stink or...

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...

I was the problem and the solution.

Working simultaneously, though seemingly without a conscience, was Dr. Ewen Cameron, whose base was a laboratory in Canada’s McGill University, in Montreal. Since his death in 1967, the history of his work for both himself...

While my sister and I were reminded we did not cause this pain, it was knowing that because we broke our silence about what had been done to us, our parents were hurting. That knowledge...

The Unexpected GiftTorn asunder from her slumberin the hour of half past threeThe child knew the tyrannical regimeand followed instinctively.-(slice from Enigmatic Evolution)

Blaming therapy, social work and other caring professions for the confabulation of testimony of ‘satanic ritual abuse’ legitimated a programme of political and social action designed to contest the gains made by the women’s movement...

The fact is, the man who’d begotten me didn’t want me. In his eyes I should never have been born. And perhaps that would’ve been best. As it was, my existence had proven to be...