He doesn’t hurt us anymore.” Of course, he doesn't hurt you anymore, I think. You're not defenseless anymore.

— Melanie O'Shea

He will experience that prickle, that shiver of disgust that afflicts him in both his happiest and most wretched moments, the one that asks him who he thinks he is to inconvenience so many people, to think he has the right to keep going when even his own body tells him he should stop.

— Hanya Yanagihara

I guess to their wide, innocent eyes it all seemed like normal family life because they had never known any different. In fact, I was the only one who had lived with anyone else, the only one that realized that life didn't have to be this terrifying and this painful all the time

— Joe Peters

I'm still not sure if I was a victim or not... and if I was, who was my abuser?

— Eskay Teel

It is a rare person who can cut himself off from mediate and immediate relations with others for long spaces of time without undergoing a deterioration in personality.

— Harry Stack Sullivan

Most kids act out because they want your attention. Don't spank your child show them some attention.

— Alcurtis Turner

Mum was determinate to crush my spirit and put a stop to my behavior once and for all, and she beat me up so violently, so often, that I finally understood I must never question her or so much as look at her directly again.

— Joe Peters

Ninety-six percent of juvenile prostitutes are fugitives from abusive domestic situations; 66 percent began working before they turned 16. (Prostitution is their only perceived means of survival.) Millions of children work as prostitutes around the world. A third are male. One study revealed that over 50 percent of prostitutes are the children of alcoholics or substance abusers, and 90 percent are deflowered through incest or rape. Ninety-one percent of prostitutes do not speak of the abuse. (The truth of life is told through the language of behavior.) Abused children suffer Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, guilt, self-destructive impulses, suspicion, fear. Seventy-five percent of prostitutes attempt suicide. (Imagine their scrapbook of memories.)

— Antonella Gambotto-Burke

[Refers to 121 children taken into care in Cleveland due to suspected abuse (1987) and later returned to their parents]Sue Richardson, the child abuse consultant at the heart of the crisis, watched as cases began to unravel: “All the focus started to fall on the medical findings; other supportive evidence, mainly which we held in the social services department, started to be screened out. A situation developed where the cases either were proven or fell on the basis of medical evidence alone. Other evidence that was available to the court, very often then, never got put. We would have had statement from the child, the social workers and the child psychologist’s evidence from interviewing. We would have evidence of prior concerns, either from social workers or teachers, about the child’s behavior or other symptoms that they might have been showing, which were completely aside from the medical findings. (Channel 4 1997) Ten years after the Cleveland crisis, Sue Richardson was adamant that evidence relating to children’s safety was not presented to the courts which subsequently returned those children to their parents: “I am saying that very clearly. In some cases, evidence was not put in the court. In other cases, agreements were made between lawyers not to put the case to the court at all, particularly as the crisis developed. Latterly, that children were sent home subject to informal agreements or agreements between lawyers. The cases never even got as far as the court. (Channel 4, 1997)” Nor is Richardson alone. Jayne Wynne, one of the Leeds pediatricians who had pioneered the use of RAD as an indicator of sexual abuse and who subsequently had detailed knowledge of many of the Cleveland children, remains concerned by the haphazard approach of the courts to their protection. I think the implication is that the children were left unprotected. The children who were being abused unfortunately returned to homes and the abuse may well have been ongoing. (Channel 4 1997)

— Heather Bacon

There are tons of kids out there who endure chronic abuse and suffer in silence. They can’t trust anyone, they can’t tell anyone, and they have no idea how to get away from it.

— C. Kennedy