Chris Smith Quotes

The worst violence we can do to each other often is psychological, especially in families. I dwell a lot on domestic danger. That's the backdrop of most of my novels - what kind of damage is done without ever lifting a finger.

Domestic abuse happens only in intimate, interdependent, long-term relationships - in other words, in families - the last place we would want or expect to find violence.

My dad was a tyrant. He used to physically beat the crap out of us.

I have been driven to the edge by parental alienation for many years now. You have to go through this to understand.

It doesn't take a bruise or a broken bone for a child to be a victim of domestic violence. Kids who witness domestic violence are victims, too.

My father was actually controlling and abusive.

No one shall strike or caress a child.

No one can doubt that the sufferings of the sober, virtuous woman, in legal subjection to the mastership of a drunken, immoral husband and father over herself and children, not only from physical abuse, but from spiritual shame and humiliation, must be such as the man himself can not possibly comprehend.

Children of domestic violence, of course, suffer terrible consequences.

A relationship can be deeply damaging without anyone leaving marks on you. So many people - especially young women - end up trying to maintain those emotionally abusive relationships because we don't think it's that bad and that we are really some of the lucky ones because we haven't experienced 'real' abuse.

I grew up with an extremely abusive father. As a mother, I wanted to protect my own children from exposure to violence. When I found out one of my daughters was in an abusive relationship, it broke my heart. Finally, she left him ?- but only after his abuse started spreading to the children.

I was abused my family was the "brady bunch

There was a ton of fighting between my mother and father. The kids would be thrown into the middle, to choose sides.

A kid in an abusive home has far fewer rights than any POW. There is no Geneva Convention for kids.

I was angry about the fact that my father would beat my mother on a daily basis, that my mother would take it in turn and beat on me. I was an abused child. I was mad about all those things, very bitter and very angry.

My father was a monster. A monster! I cut with my family when I was 23 and I never see them again.

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?

When I can no longer bear to think of the victims of broken homes, I begin to think of the victims of intact ones.

When I was married to an abuser, he'd tell me he wouldn't have to get so angry if only I'd be less demanding, more supportive, more understanding. I hid the truth from everyone, especially myself.

Nearly one in four women will experience domestic violence during her lifetime. And slightly more than half of female victims of domestic violence live in households with children under age 12.

One missing child is one too many.

What is harm for some women isn’t harm for another. Some women accept beatings and insults as a joke, while others do not.

My father was very abusive, and it was hard for my mother at first to leave because we had depended on him for so long. Sometimes you kind of get adjusted to getting that beating.

I read 'Men Who Hate Women and the Women Who Love Them,' and I found frightening pieces that related to... my own life.