"We dont distinguish between the various forms of child abuse. Emotional abuse ... is pretty much ignored. When someone spends their life being told, Youre stupid, youre a disgrace, I should have aborted you, you ruined my life, it scars them in ways that are almost impossible to describe with words. And yet, such a person describing their life would be told, Oh, you werent an incest victim? Oh, you werent burned with cigarettes? So, how abused were you really?"
Andrew Henry Vachss was an American crime fiction author, child protection consultant, and attorney exclusively representing children and youths.
"Its an extremely profitable thing to be concerned about drugs. You dont just have treatment programs, you have law enforcement programs, you have entire industries that could not function but for drugs. Including the prison industry. I think America has gone psychotic ... there are human beings—even as we speak—dying, in the kind of shrieking, tormenting pain you couldnt inflict on a P.O.W., because America doesnt want them to be drug addicts."
"When someone asks me, Why do you write comics? I tell them, for the same reason I write editorials, essays, and articles; the same reason I give speeches; the same reason I appear on TV programs, and give interviews. Same message; different forum. There is no universal forum, so the more outreach we can do, the better the chance of forming coalitions."
"[C]an you be noble as you practice violence, extortion, blackmail, even mass murder? The struggle to be free from oppression is, in my mind, per se noble. But noble causes attract a wide range of participants, and many would fall far short of nobility."
"If you look at Burke closely, youll see the prototypical abused child: hypervigilant, distrustful. Hes so committed to his family of choice—not his DNA-biological family, which tortured him, or the state which raised him, but the family that he chose—that homicide is a natural consequence of injuring any of that family. Hes not a hit man. But he shares the same religion I do, which is revenge."
"In his autobiography, former President Bill Clinton credits [Andrew] Vachss with [writing the National Child Protection Act] and notes how important it was to him and wife Hillary. But theres a catch, according to Vachss: Its never been funded."
"The biggest threat to children is always inside their houses. The predator with the ski-mask who grabs the kid out of a van, while a real thing, is a tiny percentage of those who prey upon children. Most victimization of children is within the Circle of Trust—not necessarily a parent, but somebody who was let into that circle, who can be a counselor, or a coach, or someone at a day-care center. The biggest danger to children is that theyre perceived as property, not human beings."