Geoffrey Canada Quotes

No matter how much poverty you grow up with, you shouldn't be subjected to violence and abuse.

My mind boggles at the amount of violence inflicted upon children in today's society.

Every single person in jail for a violent crime had a nightmare childhood.

More than 90 percent of all the prisoners in our American prisons have been abused as children.

The only thing my old man ever gave me was a beating.

I was brought up in a very poor and very violent household. I spent much of my childhood being afraid.

Most incarcerated women have stories that are similar to mine. They suffered great trauma as children.

It's shocking that so many children still live in fear as a result of violence in the home, and don't know who to turn to for help and support. As a child survivor of domestic violence I can remember the fear and isolation. I'm delighted to support the Hideout, the new Women's Aid website for children and young people. I know it could have made a real difference to me and will provide great comfort and support to thousands of children.

My Papa's Waltz: The whiskey on your breath Could make a small boy dizzy; But I hung on like death: Such waltzing was not easy. We romped until the pans Slid from the kitchen shelf; My mother's countenance Could not unfrown itself. The hand that held my wrist Was battered on one knuckle; At every step you missed My right ear scraped a buckle. You beat time on my head With a palm caked hard by dirt, Then waltzed me off to bed Still clinging to your shirt.

Not all forms of abuse leave bruises.

It's extraordinary what children put up with. I happened to see two of my uncles put my father up against the wall of my grandmother's house and knock his teeth out, because he'd been unpleasant to my mother. The next day I went upstairs and found my father making a rather half-hearted attempt to gas himself.

But I'm very thankful that no one is slamming my head against the wall anymore.

After my father died when I was seven and my mother entered into an abusive relationship, I shuffled between houses - staying with friends, families from church, and relying on the kindness of teachers and people throughout my community to help me grow up essentially without parents.

I punched my mother out once.

My first memory in the world is my gym teacher ripping my mother's necklace off her neck and throwing it out the window and her running downstairs to go after it. I have no memory before that. I was 4. My father had a lot of girlfriends and my mother had a lot of boyfriends.

I was an abused kid.

Of all the toys available, none is better designed than the owner himself. A large multipurpose plaything, its parts can be made to move in almost any direction. It comes completely assembled, and it makes a sound when you jump on it.

There was mental and physical abuse in my family.

I loved my parents... but that can never change the fact that my father's violence ruined my childhood.

If family violence teaches children that might makes right at home, how will we hope to cure the futile impulse to solve worldly conflicts with force?

Mother beat the hell out of us. She'd have wild outbursts.

My mother would beat me so bad, I wouldn't be able to sit down. And I would never snitch.

I was teased horribly as a child and beaten up a lot.

My father was so very afraid. I felt it in the sting of his black leather belt, which he applied with more anxiety than anger, my father who beat me as if someone might steal me away, because that was exactly what was happening all around us.

It's hunger. It's homelessness, often. It's underfunded, under-resourced schools. It's abuse beyond the chilling. It's having overwhelmed parents and caregivers. Those are the things that young people are struggling with beyond our view.