Child Abuse Quotes

“His mother had stayed with his father, no matter the cost, and part of that had been her son learning to hate his own name.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“Morality and performance of duty are artificial measures that become necessary when something essential is lacking. The more successfully a person was denied access to his or her feelings in childhood, the larger the arsenal of intellectual weapons and the supply of moral prostheses has to be, because morality and a sense of duty are not sources of strength or fruitful soil for genuine affection. Blood does not flow in artificial limbs; they are for sale and can serve many masters. What was considered good yesterday can--depending on the decree of government or party--be considered evil and corrupt today, and vice versa.

But those who have spontaneous feelings can only be themselves. They have no other choice if they want to remain true to themselves. Rejection, ostracism, loss of love, and name calling will not fail to affect them; they will suffer as a result and will dread them, but once they have found their authentic self they will not want to lose it. And when they sense that something is being demanded of them to which their whole being says no, they cannot do it. They simply cannot.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“He was bad with me too, but it was a little more random. If the phone rang and woke him up, he'd hit me, or if he had plans to go out but had to cancel for snow, he'd knock me around to burn off his anger. I was always looking for the secret code, the rules I could follow so he wouldn't freak out. That's how you keep yourself safe, you know? You pay attention to how the world works. But there was no secret code for him. It was like our actions were entirely detached from his reaction to us.”
― Emily Henry, Beach Read

“Their tears should be what they caused while playing and not when been abused.”
― Zara Vote

“When children are trained, they learn how to train others in turn. Children who are lectured to, learn how to lecture; if they are admonished, they learn how to admonish; if scolded, they learn how to scold; if ridiculed, they learn how to ridicule; if humiliated, they learn how to humiliate; if their psyche is killed, they will learn how to kill--the only question is who will be killed: oneself, others, or both.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“This toxic pattern within the broken family system will continue from one generation to the next, until one brave survivor finally ends the cycle of abuse. The dysfunction, bullying, and abuse didn’t start with you, but it most certainly can end with you.”
― Dana Arcuri, Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma

“Narcissistic abuse is cited as being ‘soul murder.’ It not only breaks your heart and crushes your spirit, but it’s directly linked to trauma wounds. Trauma pierces your core essence. It breaks you into dozens of pieces. Your trauma runs deep. Unaware, you may carry it into your adulthood.”
― Dana Arcuri, Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma

“If we ignore our abuse and trauma, it will continue to reveal itself to us. It may be subtle or it may be intense. Trauma can show up in our sleep. We may battle insomnia and nightmares. We can experience physical pain and emotional distress. We may struggle with anxiety and depression. Or we may suffer hypervigilance, dissociation, and Complex PTSD/PTSD. We may have flashbacks. We may battle triggers. Or we can suddenly be slammed with fight, flight, freeze, or fawn mode. Each of these signs are a normal trauma response. Even if we are unaware that it’s linked to our emotional trauma.”
― Dana Arcuri, Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma

“An attorney who worked for victims who'd been abused by priests told an investigative reporter, “Mark my words, Mr. Rezendez, if it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one.” And it does. It always has. But the film showed that it takes a village to stop the abuse too. One rogue attorney unwilling to let it go. One survivor who stood up first and said you can use my name. One newspaper editor who said "this matters". And a team who pulled their hearts and minds into it.”
― Rachael Denhollander, What Is a Girl Worth?: My Story of Breaking the Silence and Exposing the Truth about Larry Nassar and USA Gymnastics

“There are people whose whole life is a punishment. Kids who literally don’t know the difference between right and wrong, people who ‘know not what they do,’ to quote the Master.”
― Patry Francis, The Liar's Diary

“In the following pages I shall apply the term "poisonous pedagogy" to this very complex endeavor. It will be clear from the context in question which of its many facets I am emphasizing at the moment. The specific facets can be derived directly from the preceding quotations from child-rearing manuals. These passages teach us that:

1. Adults are the masters (not the servants!) of the dependent child.

2. They determine in godlike fashion what is right and what is wrong.

3. The child is held responsible for their anger.

4. The parents must always be shielded.

5. The child's life affirming feelings pose a threat to the autocratic adult.

6. The child's will must be "broken" as soon as possible.

7. All this must happen at a very early age, so the child "won't notice" and will
therefore not be able to expose the adults.

The methods that can be used to suppress vital spontaneity in the child are: laying traps, lying, duplicity, subterfuge, manipulation, "scare" tactics, withdrawal of love, isolation, distrust, humiliating and disgracing the child, scorn, ridicule, and coercion even to the point of torture.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“When we consider the major role intimidation plays in this ideology, which was still at the peak of its popularity at the turn of the century, it is not surprising that Sigmund Freud had to conceal his surprising discovery of adults' sexual abuse of their children, a discovery he was led to by the testimony of his patients. He disguised his insight with the aid of a theory that nullified this inadmissible knowledge. Children of his day were not allowed, under the severest of threats, to be aware of what adults were doing to them. and if Freud had persisted in his seduction theory, he not only would have had his introjected parents to fear but would no doubt have been discredited, and probably ostracized, by middle-class society. In order to protect himself, he had to devise a theory that would preserve appearances by attributing all “evil”, guilt and wrongdoing to the child's fantasies. in which the parents served only as the objects of projection. We can understand why this theory omitted the fact that it is the parents who not only project their sexual and aggressive fantasies onto the child but also are able to act out these fantasies because they wield the power. It is probably thanks to this omission that many professionals in the psychiatric field, themselves the products of "poisonous pedagogy" have been able to accept the Freudian theory of drives, because it did not force them to question their idealized image of their parents. With the aid of Freud's drive and structural theories, they have been able to continue obeying the commandment they internalized in early childhood: "Thou shalt not be aware of what your parents are doing to you.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“The history of childhood is a nightmare from which we have only recently begun to awaken.”
― Lloyd DeMause, The History of Childhood: The Untold Story of Child Abuse

“Child neglect and abuse is a hidden epidemic. The topic is taboo. Surviving abusive relationships, especially in the family unit, is complicated. Oftentimes, victims of child abuse, sexual assaults, domestic violence, and narcissistic abuse don’t report it. During my extensive research, I discovered that most children don’t disclose their sexual abuse, until late in life. On the website, Child USA, they share about delayed disclosure. “Most child victims of sexual assault disclose, if they disclose at all, during adulthood, with a median age of 48 and an average age of 52.”
― Dana Arcuri, Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma

“The youngster had frozen again as his memory flashed back to the glowering face of his grandfather, deeply lined, snarling, wild eyes stretched as wide and white as pot saucers...”
― Martin R Jackson : Running with Finn McCool

“Their tears should be they caused while playing and not been abused.”
― Zara Vote

“Verbal abuse is as damaging as physical abuse, and in some cases, it does even more damage to a child. Insulting names, degrading comments and constant criticism all leave deep emotional scars that hinder feelings of self-worth and personal agency.”
― Susan Forward, Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life

“It is also a part of "poisonous pedagogy" to impart to the child from the beginning false information and beliefs that have been passed on from generation to generation and dutifully accepted by the young even though they are not only unproven but are demonstrably false. Examples of such beliefs are:

1. A feeling of duty produces love.
2. Hatred can be done away with by forbidding it.
3. Parents deserve respect simply because they are parents.
4. Children are undeserving of respect simply because they are children.
5. Obedience makes a child strong.
6. A high degree of self-esteem is harmful.
7. A low degree of self-esteem makes a person altruistic.
8. Tenderness (doting) is harmful.
9. Responding to a child's needs is wrong.
10. Severity and coldness are a good preparation for life.
11. A pretense of gratitude is better than honest ingratitude.
12. The way you behave is more important than the way you really are.
13. Neither parents nor God would survive being offended.
14. The body is something dirty and disgusting.
15. Strong feelings are harmful.
16. Parents are creatures free of drives and guilt.
17. Parents are always right.”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“All of the rest in July he raged. And August. Everyday when he came home from work, he'd find another way to fill the house with rage, shake the walls with shame, while the little women took it and took it. Sometimes I thought he might kill one of us. But I was not afraid.”
― Lidia Yuknavitch, The Chronology of Water

“Two words sum up being the daughter of a narcissistic mother: deep sorrow. It was like a massive boulder sat on my chest. Choking me. Suffocating me. Drowning me. Spinning my life out of control. My memories of growing up to become an adult woman who suffered ritual narcissistic abuse had a common thread: Tears. Drama. And compounded trauma.”
― Dana Arcuri, Certified Trauma Recovery Coach, Soul Rescue: How to Break Free From Narcissistic Abuse & Heal Trauma

“For hundreds of years, parental rights were considered inviolate—in the name of discipline, parents could do just about anything to their children, short of killing them.”
― Susan Forward, Toxic Parents: Overcoming Their Hurtful Legacy and Reclaiming Your Life

“I AM A CHILD, NOT A SINK FOR YOUR FRUSTRATIONS”
― Vineet Raj Kapoor

“There were no books to help me so I wrote the book”
― Linda Dipman, Angels Watching Over Me

“On the Monster in the Light:

Mental illness is not an airborne virus. Monsters hide in the light. They hide in the light. Once you've identified the perp, now you've got to forgive them, right? So you go to phase two of this, which is two parts. That you sort of began to realize that monsters don't make themselves, and in order to be a monster you have to be a victim first. It's a good place to start. You know that there's nothing that releases you from your perp. Nothing better than a little sympathy for the devil. I had to feel sympathy, really understand how she [Mom] became that way.”
― Darrell Hammond

“The perception of a child may irritate you, but if you are patient, it can lead you to an understanding of yourself. The world of a child is full of magic things. You should be patient with them so that your senses can grow sharper.”
― Itayi Garande, Broken Families: How to get rid of toxic people and live a purposeful life

“We are born in absence of who we are, into the hands of a care we didn't choose, a life we didn't ask for. We grow with the belief that our sorrows and glories are all there is to know, shaping us into the only person we think we could ever become.”
― Antonia Lo Giudice, The Lollipop Triumph

“Read more, write more!”
― Rod Butler, War Baby: Nothing to hide

“It was constantly impressed upon me in forceful terms that I must obey promptly the wishes and commands of my parents, teachers, and priests, and indeed of all grown-up people, including servants, and that nothing must distract me from this duty. Whatever they said was always right. These basic principles by which I was brought up became second nature to me."
-- Rudolf Höss, Commandant at Auschwitz”
― Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence

“With these dynamics in mind, we will not be surprised to learn from the statistics that 60 percent of German terrorists in recent years have been the children of Protestant ministers. The tragedy of this situation lies in the fact that the parents undoubtedly had the best of intentions; from the very beginning, they wanted their children to be good, responsive, well-behaved, agreeable, undemanding, considerate, unselfish, self-controlled, grateful, neither willful nor headstrong nor defiant, and above all meek. They wanted to inculcate these values in their children by whatever means, and if there was no other way, they were even ready to use force to obtain these admirable pedagogical ends. If the children then showed signs of violent behavior in adolescence, they were expressing both the unlived side of their own childhood as well as the unlived, suppressed, and hidden side of their-parents' psyche, perceived only by the children themselves.

When terrorists take innocent women and children hostage in the service of a grand and idealistic cause, are they really doing anything different from what was once done to them? When they were little children full of vitality, their parents had offered them up as sacrifices to a grand pedagogic purpose, to lofty religious values, with the feeling of performing a great and good deed. Since these young people never were allowed to trust their own feelings, they continue to suppress them for ideological reasons. These intelligent and often very sensitive people, who had once been sacrificed to a "higher" morality, sacrifice themselves as adults to another-- often opposite--ideology, in whose service they allow their inmost selves to be completely dominated, as had been the case in their childhood.”
― Alice Miller

“You can talk about leaving, but then you hear his voice say, “you’re just like your mother,” and next to him, that’s the last person you want to be.”
― ian kirkpatrick, Bleed More, Bodymore