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“In the course of my work with the most violent men in maximum-security settings, not a day goes by that I do not hear reports – often confirmed by independent sources – of how these men were victimized during childhood. Physical violence, neglect, abandonment, rejection, sexual exploitation and violation occurred on a scale so extreme, so bizarre, and so frequent that one cannot fail to see that the men who occupy the extreme end of the continuum of violent behavior in adulthood occupied an equally extreme end of the continuum of violent child abuse earlier in life.”

(James Gilligan, M.D., Violence, 1996, Random House / Vintage Books, p. 45)