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...

She was so upset about a blog that maybe a total of six people read yet had no compassion for her granddaughters who had suffered the physical and emotional pains of sexual abuse and whose...

Although the terminology implies scientific endorsement, false memory syndrome is not currently an accepted diagnostic label by the APA and is not included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.; American...

When trauma involves intentional harm, such as in a crime or abuse, trust can totally collapse.

German is a much more precise language than English. Americans throw the word love around for everything: I love my wife! I love all my friends! I love rock music! I love the rain! I...

Follow your heart, not the law.

We must know something about malevolence, about how to recognize it, and about how not to make excuses for it. We must know that we cannot expect fair play.That is, perhaps, most crucial of all....

A story is a wondrous invention.

Allegations of multi-perpetrator and multi-victim sexual abuse emerged to public awareness in the early 1980s contemporaneously with the denials of the accused and their supporters. Multi-perpetrator sexual offences are typically more sadistic than solo offences...

Ninety-six per cent of juvenile prostitutes are fugitives from abusive domestic situations; 66 per cent began working before they turned 16. (Prostitution is their only perceived means of survival.) Millions of children work as prostitutes...

My goal in going public was not to put my extended family to shame, or to get back at Brian for abusing my sister and me; rather, my mission was to give a face and...

From Colin A. Ross, 1995: The writer is the brother of the man who co-founded the False Memory Syndrome Foundation. He is writing to WGBH about a program called ‘Divided Memories’, which you may have...

Era ella quien se abría como una sandía madura, roja, jugosa, tibia, ella quien sudaba esa fragancia penetrante de mariscos, ella quien lo mordía, lo arañaba, lo chupaba, gemía, agonizaba de sofoco y de placer....

It was after a Frontline television documentary screened in the US in 1995 that the Freyds’ public profile as aggrieved parents provoked another rupture within the Freyd family, when William Freyd made public his own...

Look past our kinship, and towards a romantic relationship!

Why do I take a blade and slash my arms? Why do I drink myself into a stupor? Why do I swallow bottles of pills and end up in A&E having my stomach pumped? Am...

To survive one tragedy was to learn you cannot survive them all, and this knowledge was both a freedom and a great loss.

Mum was pregnant, then there was Sharron. […]I wanted to keep him away from her – but for the wrong reasons. In my head he was mine, he was my special person but, of course,...

front person” for the system.

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....

Your heartbeat is so different from his,” I whisper it; he has to ask me to repeat myself. I explain, “My father…his heartbeat was so fast. I could feel it, racing…it was like his heartbeat...

I would like to turn in my skin and change it for a new epidermis. It feels as if I will never be able to rinse the sadness from my soul. All the while I...

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...

I think I know what he is REALLY doing in there… and thinking about ME while doing it.” (continuing) “But when he thinks of me, he thinks: sister! Think: Byblis! BYBLIS! I don’t think of...

When I was cooking I enjoyed a sense of being ‘out’ of myself. The action of dicing vegetables and warming oil made my hands tingle and my thoughts switch to a different hemisphere, right brain...

Incest, rape and abuse is rampant everywhere, even in our churches, but society is silent. It is a silent epidemic. One in three women will experience a sexual assault in her lifetime and one in...

Oedipus complex,” which became the foundation of modern psychology. According to this theory any young girl actually desires sexual contact with her father, because she wants to compete with her mother to be the most...

The child who attends school does not remember the abuse that happens at home or via the family; those memories are held in another part of the child’s mind. The child does not even remember abuse...

One hundred twenty-nine women with previously documented histories of sexual victimization in childhood were interviewed and asked detailed questions about their abuse histories to answer the question “Do people actually forget traumatic events such as...

Mind Your Language in the Presence of PatriachsQ. When is rape not rape? A. When it is your father or stepfather.

Gay men! And it’s incest! With the same face!

Dr. Talbon was struck by another very important thing. It all hung together. The stories Cheryl told — even though it was upsetting to think people could do stuff like that — they were not...

It was Freud’s ambition to discover the cause of hysteria, the archetypal female neurosis of his time. In his early investigations, he gained the trust and confidence of many women, who revealed their troubles to...

He’s at war with himself. Why doesn’t he surrender to his feelings and stop fighting himself? He has hang-ups that I must cut him loose from.

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...

The memories seem to come in layers. For example, the first memory might be of incest; then they remember robes and candles; next they realize that their father or mother or both were present when...

I am afraid of him now. The one I love most in the world.

Having DID is, for many people, a very lonely thing. If this book reaches some people whose experiences resonate with mine and gives them a sense that they aren’t alone, that there is hope, then...

Both incest and the Holocaust have been subject to furious denial by perpetrators and other individuals and by highly organised groups such as the False Memory Syndrome Foundation and the Committee for Historical Review. Incest...

All right, Chris, you’ve given me a breather. I’m prepared foranything.And thank you for saying all of that, and for loving me, for youhaven’t gone unloved, or unadmired, yourself.” I kissed him quickly onthe lips,...

(Talking about the movement to deny the prevalence and effects of adult sexual exploitation of children)So what does this movement consist of? Who are the movers and shakers? Well molesters are in it, of course....

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....

The horror of incest is not in the sexual act. but in the exploitation of children and the corruption of parental love. p4

One year later the society claimed victory in another case which again did not fit within the parameters of the syndrome, nor did the court find on the issue. Fiona Reay, a 33 year old...

If I was set an essay on Friday, I’d spend three hours on Saturday morning in the library. Was that normal? I didn’t know. What I did know was that I felt less prone to...

There is an intergenerational reoccurrence rate of 30% in incest.

Don’t you understand brother? I want to find a love…that will free me from this love…

We must understand that those who experience abuse as children, and particularly those who experience incest, almost invariably suffer from a profound sense of guilt and shame that is not meliorated merely by unearthing memories...

To take a specific example, a researcher in the Journal of Traumatic Stress interviewed 129 women with documented histories of child sexual abuse that occurred between the ages of 10 months and 12 years. Of...

And thank you for saying all of that, and for loving me, for you haven’t gone unloved, or unadmired, yourself.