“Now, I admit a family member touched me: touched me, touched me, touched me. From a child to the age 14, yeah. While I laid asleep, took my virginity; so scared to say something, so I just put the blame on me.”— R. Kelly, genius.com
“Abuse is not a mistake. A mistake is a lapse in judgment. Forgetting to silence your phone during a movie is a mistake. Ordering curry from a Thai restaurant without any reviews on yelp? Mistake. Abuse is a CONCIOUS DECISION. Stop making excuses for abusers.”— Franchesca Ramsey, twitter.com
“If you want to know what normalization of misogyny looks like, it's characterizing domestic violence as just a *different kind* of family values.”— Jessica Valenti, twitter.com
“You’ll also be whipped, about twenty lashes during each session. The whip has to be used hard enough to leave some good welts for the camera. I don’t want to get you all bloody, so the whip strokes will be concentrated on your thighs, your butt, sex organs, belly, and tits. Even if you’re gagged, th…”— David Parker Ray, amazon.com
“'It's hard to believe Chloe would try for months to get back with him if she was being emotionally and sexually abused.' Hard disagree from me! I once begged my abuser to stay because he convinced me he was the only one who'd love me. Just sayin'!”— Allie Goertz, twitter.com
“Because no matter how much you want to get clean, withdrawals are powerful. Abusive relationships are no different. When your identity is taken from you, it’s hard to exist without the person who holds it hostage.”— From Canvas to Ship, twitter.com
“I believed that, to borrow an analogy from a friend, if I kept digging I would find water.”— Chloe Dykstra, medium.com
“My dad was domineering. He had a different set of values, but also a very stern individual. My dad drank a lot, and when he drank a lot, he was abusive to my mother and to me. But I never swung at my dad, because I loved him for what he stood for.”— John Wayne Gacy, chicago.cbslocal.com
“I was dumped into a cell without any medical attention or surgical attention whatever. My broken bones were not set. My ankles and legs were not put into a cast. The doctor never came near me and no one else was allowed to do anything for me. At the end of 14 months of constant agony, I was taken to…”— Carl Panzram, www-rohan.sdsu.edu
“They stripped us naked and chained us up to a door, and then turned the fire hose on us until we were black and blue and half blind.”— Carl Panzram, www-rohan.sdsu.edu
“I first began to think that I was being unjustly imposed upon. Then I began to hate those who abused me. Then I began to think that I would have my revenge just as soon and as often as I could injure someone else. Anyone at all would do.”— Carl Panzram, www-rohan.sdsu.edu
“Everybody thought it was all right to deceive me, lie to me and kick me around whenever they felt like it, and they felt like it pretty regular.”— Carl Panzram, www-rohan.sdsu.edu
“I began to suspect that there was something wrong with the treatment I was getting from the human race.”— Carl Panzram, www-rohan.sdsu.edu
“The continuous mutual abuse of groups holding differing views, which we witness in the newspapers, will certainly never lead to progress. Abuse convinces no one; it only degrades and brutalizes the abuser. Lies and unjust accusations achieve still less; they often finally boomerang on those who orig…”— Fridtjof Nansen, nobelprize.org
“I have spent the best years of my life giving people the lighter pleasures, helping them have a good time, and all I get is abuse, the existence of a hunted man.”— Al Capone, en.wikiquote.org
“Would the U.S. be able to partially prevent violent incidents like mass shooting if signs of teen dating violence, especially violence against women, was taken more seriously?”— Lily Herman, teenvogue.com
“The power that you had in order to be able to do this gross shit? It’s power you can use to actually stop this gross shit.”— Ijeoma Oluo, theestablishment.co
“When the relationship is based in any kind of abuse, mentally, physically, sexually, verbally or emotionally. When the relationship is based in manipulation, overt or covert, you can be sure you are being used and abused. When you are living in constant anxiety never knowing or being able to predict…”— Geneieve Shaw Brown, abcnews.go.com