There is one place in which one's privacy, intimacy, integrity and inviolability are guaranteed - one's body and mind, a unique temple and a familiar territory of sensa and personal history. The abuser invades, defiles and desecrates this shrine. He does so publicly, deliberately, repeatedly and, often, sadistically and sexually, with undisguised pleasure. Hence the all-pervasive, long-lasting, and, frequently, irreversible effects and outcomes of abuse.
In a way, the abuse victim's own body and mind are rendered his worse enemies. It is mental and corporeal agony that compels the sufferer to mutate, his identity to fragment, his ideals and principles to crumble. The body, one’s very brain, become accomplices of the bully or tormentor, an uninterruptible channel of communication, a treasonous, poisoned territory.
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