innocence

Today, acknowledgement of the prevalence and harms of child sexual abuse is counterbalanced with cautionary tales about children and women who, under pressure from social workers and therapists, produce false allegations of __aedophile rings_, __ult abuse_ and __itual abuse_. Child protection investigations or legal cases involving allegations of organised child sexual abuse are regularly invoked to illustrate the dangers of __alse memories_, __oral panic_ and __ommunity hysteria_. These cautionary tales effectively delimit the bounds of acceptable knowledge in relation to sexual abuse. They are circulated by those who locate themselves firmly within those bounds, characterising those beyond as ideologues and conspiracy theorists. However firmly these boundaries have been drawn, they have been persistently transgressed by substantiated disclosures of organised abuse that have led to child protection interventions and prosecutions. Throughout the 1990s, in a sustained effort to redraw these boundaries, investigations and prosecutions for organised abuse were widely labelled __iscarriages of justice_ and workers and therapists confronted with incidents of organised abuse were accused of fabricating or exaggerating the available evidence. These accusations have faded over time as evidence of organised abuse has accumulated, while investigatory procedures have become more standardised and less vulnerable to discrediting attacks. However, as the opening quotes to this introduction illustrate, the contemporary situation in relation to organised abuse is one of considerable ambiguity in which journalists and academics claim that organised abuse is a discredited __oral panic_ even as cases are being investigated and prosecuted.

I relinquished myself to existence pure and simple, thinking absolutely nothing__s if my mind were merely an echo chamber for the music, as if it contained only ether or at most a vaguely pleasant odor as of roses preserved between the pages of a book, their significance long forgotten. The tongue of the road gobbled me up and I allowed myself to sink like a tasty mouthful all the way to the bottom of a marvelous, rejuvenating vacuity. Later, it would occur to me it__ the emptiness we mistakenly call Innocence.

Abuse manipulates and twists a child__ natural sense of trust and love. Her innocent feelings are belittled or mocked and she learns to ignore her feelings. She can__ afford to feel the full range of feelings in her body while she__ being abused__ain, outrage, hate, vengeance, confusion, arousal. So she short-circuits them and goes numb. For many children, any expression of feelings, even a single tear, is cause for more severe abuse. Again, the only recourse is to shut down. Feelings go underground.

The thing about learning how to fight is that_ some of us are not born with that desire. They say some are born fighters; but they don't usually point out that others just aren't. Some of us are forced by life to take up arms and fight. Many of us are. The art lies in knowing when to wield those arms and when to put them down. I don't think it's a matter of pretending to be ideally unharmed by life and untouched by darkness; because that is hypocrisy. Rather, I think it is a matter of being true to your truth and learning when to fight and learning when to be soft. Hopefully, our soft moments in life will largely outweigh, outrank, and outrun our fighting.

Our lips were for each other and our eyes were full of dreams. We knew nothing of travel and we knew nothing of loss. Ours was a world of eternal spring, until the summer came.

_, Muse of the Heart__ Passion,let me relive my Love__ memory,to remember her body, so brave and so free,and the sound of my Dreameress singing to me,and the scent of my Dreameress sleeping by me,_, sing, sweet Muse, my soliloquy!

The echo of two boys playing in a pool testing each other to see who could hold their breath the longest._ Whadda ya wanna do now?_ I know, we could wrestle like the Roman gladiators_ Okay_ What do we fight for?_ Loser has to do the victor__ homework for a week_ Nah, raise the stakes. Loser has to suck the victor__ johnny_ Trenton recalled the long ago memory of two boys wrestling, butt naked in the back yard and the battle went on forever locked in each other__ grip. A stalemate tangle in each other__ arm. And they kissed finding each other__ tongue. The taste of it so good and frightening at the same time and they pulled apart fearfully_ Deez_ Yeah Trent_ I don__ think we should tell anyone about this, okay? _ Yeah okay_

His games have a deeper meaning and fascination that adults can no longer fathom and require nothing more than three pebbles, or a piece of wood with a dandelion helmet, perhaps; but above all they require only the pure, strong, passionate, chaste, still-untroubled fantasy of those happy years when life still hesitates to touch us, when neither duty nor guilt dares lay a hand upon us, when we are allowed to see, hear, laugh, wonder, and dream without the world's demanding anything in return, when the impatience of those whom we want so much to love has not yet begun to torment us for evidence, some early token, that we will diligently fulfill our duties. Ah, it will not be long, and all that will rain down upon us in overwhelming, raw power, will assault us, stretch us, cramp us, drill us, corrupt us.

Listen to the child in you and follow its innocence

Sometimes, I miss so much the person that I was before the world tore me up in so many places. If only "they" could have just let me stay that way.

No parson in the world ever pictured heaven so beautifully as they did, in their innocent talk

A rule without exceptions is an instrument capable of doing mischief to the innocent and bringing grief -- as well as injustice -- to those who should gain exemptions from the rule's functioning.

There is no place for innocence on the battlefield.

Innocence could be lost more than once after all.

You lost your innocence when you grew up, all right, everyone knew that, but did you have to lose your hope, as well?

Who has believed in the world and died with its name on his lips?

COME HOME, TENAR! COME HOME!__n the deep valley, in the twilight, the apple trees were on the eve of blossoming; here and there among the shadowed boughs one flower had opened early, rose and white, like a faint star. Down the orchard aisles, in the thick, new, wet grass, the little girl ran for the joy of running; hearing the call she did not come at once, but made a long circle before she turned her face toward home. The mother waiting in the doorway of the hut, with the firelight behind her, watched the tiny figure running and bobbing like a bit of thistledown blown over the darkening grass beneath the trees.

Influence is everything. One wrong influence can single handedly destroy every bit of your innocence and innocence is the root of all wisdom.