sexual abuse

I feel I got the short end of the stick because of emotional and financial costs I am still paying for what he did — the grooming, the mind games, the violation of my body and my agency, the disregard for my mental and physical well-being, the purposeful isolation from friends and family. I have already spent a decade in therapy trying to find solid ground, struggling to revive even a shadow of the person I used to be.

November 25 is International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls. Using the color orange to symbolize “a brighter future without violence,” 16 days of activism has been planned to bring recognition to the continued dangers facing women and girls around the world.

The juvenile justice system is brutal, but it's even worse than we thought. 

You may not think that a sexual abuse survivor would find healing in putting on a leotard and displaying her body for others to judge, but that’s exactly what my journey has been.

All responses by victims of incest are valid. Fear, anger, and rage are often the most understandable, but victims often love their abusers, too. That love doesn't always vanish the second that abuse occurs, and in fact many abusers rely on that love to conceal and even continue the abuse.

Make no mistake: Josh Duggar is the one and only person responsible for molesting his sisters. But it's naive to pretend that the environment in which he was raised had no impact on his actions.

I didn't have a fairy-tale childhood, unless it was one of those dark and grim ones that really shouldn't be read to children.

Please buy a dictionary and look up “censorship.” The definition is not “brief note concerning the subject matter of the following text.”