But in any case, validity, offender self-reports have dubious validity, especially when the offender’s self-interest is at stake. The only rule for deception in sex offenders I have ever found is this: If it is...

Ritual Abuse usually involves repeated abuse over an extended period of time. The physical abuse is severe, sometimes including torture and killing. The sexual abuse is usually painful,humiliating, intended as a means of gaining dominance...

The very first part in healing is shattering the silence,

The central attitudes driving the Drill Sergeant are:I need to control your every move or you will do it wrong.I know the exact way that everything should be done.You shouldn’t have anyone else — or...

Games where someone wants to touch your body where your swimsuit covers or they ask you to touch their body where their swimsuit covers. Those body parts are private. No one is allowed to touch...

The question that remains unanswered and keeps coming to the fore is ‘Are the punishment schemes for child sex and sexual abuse deterrent in nature? Amidst ongoing debates in most countries about capital punishment as...

The most important thing in defining child sexual abuse is the experience of the child. It takes very little for a child’s world to be devastated. A single experience can have a profound impact on...

But no matter how much evil I see, I think it’s important for everyone to understand that there is much more light than darkness.

The survivor movements were also challenging the notion of a dysfunctional family as the cause and culture of abuse, rather than being one of the many places where abuse nested. This notion, which in the...

During this hour in the waking streets I felt at ease, at peace; my body, which I despised, operated like a machine. I was spaced out, the catchphrase my friends at school used to describe...

The silence was killing me.And that’s all there ever was. Silence. It was all I knew. Keep quiet. Pretend nothing had happened, that nothing was wrong. And look how well that was turning out.

Like the psychological model outlined above, the psychiatric understanding of ’organised paedophilia’ is a framework that is focused primarily on individual psychological factors and overlooks the role of violence in criminal groups and the contexts...

witch hunters,” as those on this list soon came to describe themselves, were increasingly activists who used the internet to exchange information and ideas. Jonathan Harris may have done more than anyone else to disseminate...

Imagine, pretend, and play so you can become anyone you want to be. You don’t need to be afraid.

Theirs was the eternal youth of an alternating self, a youth with the constant although unfulfilled promise of growing up

So often parents of abused children feel helpless. When a child falls, and scrapes her knees parents can erase the hurt by kissing it and putting a Band-Aid on it, but not so with the...

Abuse? Ah. Such problems, even with time, do not go away on their own. They must be addressed. André Chevalier

My body was a Pandora’s box of aches and pains. When Grandpa died all the ailments came jumping out. I was forever twitching and shaking. I had a persistent sore throat and had difficulty swallowing...

killing off these hormones and liberate the person from their vicious influence” (…) I say it is a prejudice because part of what it means to be a mentally healthy and well adapted individual involves...

Thank goodness it wasn’t real sex.

I think I just said it, but I think it’s worth repeating. They gave me hope that there is good in the world out there. There really is. It really does exist. Regardless of how...

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...

Naw, I say. Mr ____, can tell you, I don’t like it at all. What is it to like? He git up on you, heist your nightgown round your waist, plunge in. Most times I...

You’re the Executive Director of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation – a foundation that says it wants to disseminate scientific information to the community regarding this syndrome but you can’t, or won’t, give me its...

My view is that the false memory campaign is a spent force. It failed to realise its key goals, failed to renew itself and has largely faded away. Of course, the false memory campaign has...

The witch-hunt narrative is now the conventional wisdom about these cases. That view is so widely endorsed and firmly entrenched that so widely endorsed and firmly entrenched that there would seem to be nothing left...

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...

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...

Imagine the message that sent to my sister and me. A cousin violates us, confesses, and walks away with barely a slap on the wrist. I learned at a young age that if I was...

Abuse is a parasite that feeds off hate and shame, growing in size and strength with silence.

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...

Let’s teach that loving isn’t always loving. Like when you loved the hamster so much that it died. Some adults do that too. Too much, the wrong way. These are ‘Stay away’ zones on your...

Nice tits” to his mother? His sister? His daughter?) And although I should know better, I, too, equate my body with my soul and the result, at least sometimes, is a deep shame of both....

An engaging examination of a painful subject, with a focus on healing and forgiveness. – Kirkus Review

The BFMSS [British False Memory Syndrome Society]The founder of the ‘false memory’ movement in Britain is an accused father. Two of his adult daughters say that Roger Scotford sexually abused them in childhood. He denied...

In a world where women are commodities, a woman who refuses to sell herself will have the thing she refuses to sell taken away from her by force

Treating Abuse Today 3(4) pp. 26-33While Pamela Freyd was speaking to us on the record about her organization, another development was in the making in the Freyd family. Since Pamela and her husband, Peter Freyd,...

organised abuse” (Bibby, 1996; La Fontaine, 1993). Excluded from this definition arecases where a child is sexually abused by multiple perpetrators who are unaware of one another, such as survival sex amongst homeless youths, or...

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...

A child has a greater chance of being sexually abused than burned in a fire. Along with stop, drop, and roll we must teach them to yell, run, and tell.

Not even Carol knows firsthand how it feels to be hurt in such a way by someone who’s supposed to protect you

By opening the door to my life, it is my hope and mission to shed light on the hidden wounds of abuse, to end the stigma and shame associated with abuse, and to show survivors...

Denial can be a most useful, temporary shield. Unfortunately, such flimsy armor will not last a lifetime. It is best to face your past, and do so quickly, before your past returns to face you.”—...

Why did I allow the abuse to continue? Even as a teenager?I didn’t. Something that had been plaguing me for years now made sense. It was like the answer to a terrible secret. The thing...

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...

In my family, you can rot to hell on the inside as long as you’re flawless on the outside, which is really sick, but also hard to unlearn.

only the survivor” can truly define justice. – Kirkus Review

Survivors are damaged to different degrees by their experiences. This does not depend on what happened physically. A Survivor who has been raped will not necessarily be more damaged than a Survivor who has been...

Many governments employ torture but this was the first time that the element of Saturnalia and pornography in the process had been made so clear to me. If you care to imagine what any inadequate...

Treating Abuse Today 3(4) pp. 26-33TAT: I see the agenda. But let’s go back: one of the contentions the therapeutic community has about the Foundation’s professed scientific credibility is your use of the term “syndrome.”...