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“Underlying the attack on psychotherapy, I believe, is a recognition of the potential power of any relationship of witnessing. The consulting room is a privileged space dedicated to memory. Within that space, survivors gain the freedom to know and tell their stories. Even the most private and confidential disclosure of past abuses increases the likelihood of eventual public disclosure. And public disclosure is something that perpetrators are determined to prevent. As in the case of more overtly political crimes, perpetrators will fight tenaciously to ensure that their abuses remain unseen, unacknowledged, and consigned to oblivion.

The dialectic of trauma is playing itself out once again. It is worth remembering that this is not the first time in history that those who have listened closely to trauma survivors have been subject to challenge. Nor will it be the last. In the past few years, many clinicians have had to learn to deal with the same tactics of harassment and intimidation that grassroots advocates for women, children and other oppressed groups have long endured. We, the bystanders, have had to look within ourselves to find some small portion of the courage that victims of violence must muster every day.

Some attacks have been downright silly; many have been quite ugly. Though frightening, these attacks are an implicit tribute to the power of the healing relationship. They remind us that creating a protected space where survivors can speak their truth is an act of liberation. They remind us that bearing witness, even within the confines of that sanctuary, is an act of solidarity. They remind us also that moral neutrality in the conflict between victim and perpetrator is not an option. Like all other bystanders, therapists are sometimes forced to take sides. Those who stand with the victim will inevitably have to face the perpetrator's unmasked fury. For many of us, there can be no greater honor. p.246 - 247
Judith Lewis Herman, M.D. February, 1997”
― Judith Lewis Herman, Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence - From Domestic Abuse to Political Terror

“the damage done to us during our childhood cannot be undone, since we cannot change anything in our past. we can repair ourselves and gain our lost integrity by choosing to look more honestly at the knowledge that is stored inside our bodies and bringing that knowledge closer to our awareness.”
― Alice Miller

“The word 'survivor' carries a weight of remembrance that has broken the minds and bodies of more than a few men and women. It also contains a humbling light of recognition that compels many to do whatever they can to help reinforce the efforts of those who might be 'at risk' of not just giving up on their dreams, but of giving up on their continued existence.”
― Aberjhani, Illuminated Corners: Collected Essays and Articles Volume I.

“All humans at some time experience injustice, assault, disqualification, invasion and betrayal. No person is completely shielded. We need not trace our family trees very far back or study for long what life was like for our forbears to uncover humanity's abusiveness. The inherited scars of our multigenerational families exist in our family systems as we know them today. The abuse of the past often exists as the shame of today, and the shame is perpetuated through our patterns of interaction.”
― Merle A. Fossum, Facing Shame: Families in Recovery

“Political prisoners describe:
- extreme physical and emotional torture
- distortion of language, truth, meaning and reality
- sham killings
- begin repeatedly taken to the point of death or threatened with death
- being forced to witness abusive acts on others
- being forced to make impossible "choices"
- boundaries smashed i.e. by the use of forced nakedness, shame, embarrassment
- hoaxes, 'set ups', testing and tricks
- being forced to hurt others

Ritual abuse survivors often describe much the same things.”
― Laurie Matthew, Who Dares Wins

“One in four girls will experience sexual abuse by the time she is sixteen, and 48 percent of all rapes involve a young woman under the age of eighteen. It’s not surprising then, that in a society where sexual abuse of young women is rampant, many women never share their stories. They remain hidden and invisible.”
― Patti Feuereisen, Invisible Girls: The Truth About Sexual Abuse--A Book for Teen Girls, Young Women, and Everyone Who Cares About Them

“Positive mind-set is vital for surviving hard-times.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita, Think Great: Be Great!

“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 own...no identity...then they...
rebuild the person & shape their will in order to...try and
make the person one of them...thus gaining
power

If abusers hold all the power, becoming one of them can, for some, be the only means of survival. However, this doesn't always work, instead survivors often find ways of regaining their own power and fighting back.”
― Laurie Matthew, Who Dares Wins

“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 the abuse. Children are often forced to abuse other children. Pornography and prostitution are sometimes part of the abuse as is the use of drugs, hypnotism and mind control. Some groups use complex rituals to terrify, silence and convince victims of the tremendous power of the abusers. the purpose is to gain and maintain power over the child in order to exploit. Some groups are so highly organised that they also have links internationally through trade in child-pornography, drugs and arms.

Some abusers organise themselves around a religion or faith and the teaching and training of the children within this faith, often takes the form of severe and sustained torture and abuse. Whether or not the adults within this type of group believe that what they are doing is, in some way 'right' is immaterial to the child on the receiving end of the 'teachings' and abuse.”
― Laurie Matthew, Who Dares Wins

“Even if our survival skills have become impediments we would like to let go of because they have ceased to serve us, we can still love ourselves with them. In appreciation of our survival, we can be awed at how our resources brought us through, even when these resources were things like indifference, a wall of rage, a cold heart…We learn to embrace ourselves as humans with faults and problems.”
― Maureen Brady

“Those who support such survivors of abuse often find it difficult to hear the reality of those survivors' lives and experience and are often unsupported themselves. Rather than being supported, workers are often ridiculed, castigated or accused of being gullible or of giving the survivor false memories. Many workers work in isolation and a climate of hostility and are unable to talk about the work they do.
Yes, despite all the odds, survivors of ritual abuse are beginning to speak out about their experiences, and some people, mainly in voluntary organisations, are beginning to listen to them and support them.
[Published 2001]”
― Laurie Matthew, Who Dares Wins

“In some counties, there is an actual named crime of ritual abuse and there too, there have been convictions.”
― Laurie Matthew, Who Dares Wins

“We are what we allow ourselves to become. Never settle for less than what you deserve. Keep fighting the good fight! Keep giving your all to achieve, receive and succeed”
― Cecibel Contreras

“I could be proud to have survived what some have called the asshole of creation, proud that it held me and couldn't keep me. But it is dangerous nonsense to believe that anyone contributed much to her own survival.”
― Ruth Klüger, Still Alive: A Holocaust Girlhood Remembered

“I don't know how to fight. All I know how to do is stay alive.”
― Alice Walker, The Color Purple

“I don't give a damn
What anybody says-
If you try
To bend your mind that far,
It disturbs your guts
Which lie right next
To where the soul is housed
In any human body that's been
Screwed by it's mother.
And then all night long
There are screams in the dark
Saying
Mama, don't.”
― Kathy Evert, When You're Ready: A Woman's Healing from Childhood Physical and Sexual Abuse by Her Mother

“Speaking out about ritual abuse brings more information and potential understanding about this issue to a society steeped in denial. There are many similar or related horrors in the world that are also denied.”
― Jadelinn, Spirit Alive: A Woman's Healing from Cult Ritual Abuse

“Under all that charred wreckage was the heartwood. Bruised. Scarred. But still good. Still capable of growth. When she looked in the mirror, she no longer saw a victim, but a survivor.”
― Gwen Mitchell, Rain of Ash

“the smallest of people can be the greatest survivors”
― Sabrina Gaskin Me

“Most people doing transformative justice work didn't get into it because we thought it would be a random, fun thing to do. We do it because we're survivors, or the people closest to us are. We care about survivors; we know what it's like to survive brutal shit, often alone. We want to change the world so this stuff never happens again.”
― Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Beyond Survival: Strategies and Stories from the Transformative Justice Movement