Crafting a thesis statement involves narrowing your focus and deciding on a point of view or position for the reader to follow. Choosing one idea for your thesis statement requires careful consideration, evaluating the evidence and digesting the significance of the material or research on the subject. It may also depend on a specific topic that your professor requires. You're providing the reader with an introduction to your domestic violence paper and want to ensure that you clearly spell out your message and communicate why your point of view is important. For example, a general statement that simply says domestic violence happens between partners isn't clear and doesn't help the reader to understand where your paper is going. In contrast, a statement that says domestic violence affects 1.

Domestic violence isn't always the same. Some victims suffer emotional abuse, while others endure the physical kind. If your paper focuses on injuries incurred during spousal or relationship abuse, ideas for a possible thesis can address a particular type of injury. For example, traumatic brain injury is a possible result when one partner strikes the other in the head. If you choose this type of injury, your thesis should spell out how prevalent this is, why it is a problem and what the symptoms are. You may take an even more focused approach and design a thesis statement that includes the issue of repeat brain injury or the healing process. Other potential topics for your thesis in this area include bone breaks, bruises or weapon-inflicted wounds. The picture of the battered wife that the media depicts isn't always accurate.

Not every instance of domestic violence is abuse against a woman. Women can assault men and men can also assault their males partners. They also suffer from intrusive recollections of the event, which are the childhood equivalent of flashbacks in adults. The following case example illustrates some of these symptoms in a very young child: Karen, age 2 years, 5 months, was referred for an assessment after she had been found by police in her home with her mother, who had been fatally shot. Apparently, she had been with her mother during the assault, which occurred several hours before police were summoned. In the beginning of the first assessment session, Karen immediately announced that her mother had been shot and was lying on the floor.

She became overwhelmed and began to run around the room. For each of the next four sessions, she played out sequences in which she would call the police on the telephone, tell them about her mother, and describe how she was lying on the floor. Her grandmother, with whom she now lived, reported that Karen had difficulty falling asleep at night, verbalizing before bedtime her intense wishes to see her mother. She had nightmares, some of which seemed to involve themes of shooting and crawling on the floor. Her grandmother also reported that her demeanor and personality seemed to have changed since the shooting.

She was subdued, passive, and preoccupied and did not play with spontaneity or pleasure. Her grandmother contrasted this behavior with her previous cheerfulness and energy. Karen shows a range of symptomatology that is consistent of PTSD symptoms in older children and adults. One of the more impressive findings from the children seen in the Child Witness to Violence Project Groves, is the clarity with which they may recall the violent events. It is not unusual for a child to narrate the event or even to draw a picture of it that includes detailed information about the environment or the events immediately preceding the traumatic experience.

For example, an 8-year-old girl drew a picture of a shooting on the street in front of her house in which her younger sister was injured. In the picture, her family members were located exactly in the positions where they had been when the event occurred. She even remembered the color of the cars on the street. As she drew, she talked about how the sun was shining at an angle across the buildings. She recalled that her sister had lost a slipper just before the shots rang out. She began to replay the events immediately preceding the shooting, perhaps in an effort to achieve and justify another outcome of the tragedy.

It was as though the event were imprinted in her memory with the clarity of a camera. All of the details were intact for her recall. Children may use all of their senses in remembering an event. Their views of the event may be distorted and idiosyncratic. For example, a 3-year-old boy was sitting in the front seat of a car when his adult care-giver, seated next to him, was shot. There was no forewarning of the event. He had no other perspective of the event. These responses in young children have several implications for their development. First, children are forced to learn early lessons about loss, death, and body injury. These lessons present themselves even before the child has cognitive apparatus to understand them. How does a 3-year-old understand murder?

What explanation can a 5-year-old create to understand why his father has just beaten and kicked his mother? Most importantly, children who witness violence also learn at an early age that the world is a dangerous and unpredictable place. Their natural curiosity about exploring and moving out into the world is affected. An 8-year-old boy who witnessed the shooting of his younger sister told his therapist that he did not think he would ever feel safe again going outside. This message about the world is exactly the contrary of what we desire for young children. We know that young children begin to explore the larger world by cautiously moving out and sampling new experiences and sights. However, when children feel unsafe in this exploration, their curiosity is thwarted and their desire to learn by exploring is affected.

Second, children come to view the adults in their lives as incapable of protecting them. They extend such view and begin believing that they must take the responsibility on themselves, a prospect that causes great anxiety in children. A 5-year-old girl drew a picture of her mother, who is a victim of chronic domestic violence, lying on the floor beside her bed. The girl then told a story about how she and her little brother were playing alone in the next room. She began to worry that something might happen to her brother and that how her mother would be unable to help her or her brother. Third, children who witness violence experience overwhelming helplessness in the face of the trauma. This helplessness leads to feelings of incompetence and worthlessness.

A 9-year-old boy who was shot in the leg on a playground managed to leave the playground during the melee. He did not tell his parents about the injury until they discovered blood several hours later. When asked about this astounding secrecy, he replied that he just wanted to hide because he feared he might be shot again. Finally, children who feel so helpless and terrified sometimes turn to aggression and hostility as a means of coping with and transforming such vulnerability. They tend to believe that it is safer to be aggressive than to be a helpless bystander.

In the Child Witness to Violence Project , children who witnessed violence drew pictures of playground fights being settled with guns or pictures of themselves armed with weapons. It is,therefore,quite possible that the 4-year-old bystander to violence grows up to be a year-old perpetrator of violence because of his or her early experiences with violence. Parents often mirror the same helplessness in the face of violence that children exhibit. Parents speak of guilt at their failure to protect their children from witnessing violence. In the Child Witness to Violence Project , it has been found that there are significant differences between how parents cope with domestic violence on the one hand and community violence on the other.

Although some of these differences are self-evident, they bear scrutiny in terms of their impact on children. Families that are torn apart because of domestic violence are less able to psychologically support children in times of crisis than are families that face trauma from an external community source. In the former family, the child may have no one to turn to for protection or reassurance. When one parent is the terrified victim and the other the perpetrator of violence, what choice does that child have? For women who do not leave their partners, constant tension and fear exist about the next violent episode.

Children are hypervigilant and anxious. Their mothers may be equally anxious and may focus most of their psychic energy on making sure there is no recurrence of violence. When mothers and their children are forced to leave their homes and go into shelters, children face the additional trauma of loss of familiar space, facilities and belongings. They lose the support of their school or childcare network. They are forced to live in shelters with other families who are equally traumatized. The daily routines of shelters are necessarily regimented and strict to accommodate the needs of groups and to ensure the safety of the women.

However, these rules and practices may not be the best for children. Their most expectations about a safe and peaceful alternate home are put paid to in such shelters. Therefore, shelters often are stressful and chaotic for children. Families who have witnessed community violence, but who do not live with domestic violence, respond to the violence differently. A violent event may throw a family into turmoil, temporarily rendering the parents unable to perform some basic parenting tasks. When the violence occurs outside the home, however, parents may be able to offer better emotional support and protection to children than those parents who are directly involved with violence.

For example, one family with three children ranging in age from 8 to 17 years experienced the traumatic loss of a family friend as a result of a drive-by shooting. All of the children witnessed this incident. They described themselves as emotionally paralyzed. With intervention, however, these symptoms abated; the parents were able to help each child cope with the aftermath of this tragedy by encouraging the children to talk about it and plan a memorial to this young friend. The burden for parents who live in chronically dangerous environments becomes more complicated and onerous. Parents are forced to adapt their parenting styles to the realities of the environment.

This adaptation might even mean not letting children play outside, invoking strict curfews and other limits, and teaching children to be vigilant. These impersonal pastimes do not promote peer relationships or a sense of accomplishment and purpose in children. Children are harmed in many ways through the abuse of their mothers. They are both physically and psychologically harmed. Often they are accidentally harmed by blows or flying objects aimed at the mother, or are stepped on or stumbled over, dropped when the mother is attacked, or injured before they are born when the mother is expectant.

Batterers often deliberately abuse children physically and verbally to make the mother react and to establish an overall reign of terror and supposed discipline. Aside from these direct forms of abuse, whether accidental or intentional, children are harmed by exposure to the abuse and by periodic or constant disruption of their daily lives. The abuse also means a greater likelihood that the child will grow up to abuse his spouse. Many studies have found a significant overlap between wife beating and child battering. This causes double trauma. These children suffer personal abuse from the perpetrator as well as experience the added trauma of abuse of their mother.

This psychological damage takes the form of. Reports by battered mothers show that 87 percent of children witness the abuse. Parents who contend that the children did not know are only deceiving themselves, and insulting the intelligence of their children. Many parents minimize or deny the presence of the children during the violence by suggesting that the children were asleep in bed or playing outside. Interviews with children have, however, revealed that children can accurately describe incidents of violence. The range of direct witnessing runs from a fleeting glance to witnessing the murder of their mother.

Events can be witnessed in many ways, not just by sight. Children also witness the consequences of the abuse after the abuse has actually occurred. They witness the tension in the house, apprehension of their mother when the abuser enters the room, and the way their mother jumps or tenses up when she hears his car pull into the driveway. That they will do and say anything their father wants them to do so he will not turn his violence on them. According to the New York Task Force on Women in the Courts , children who witness their fathers beating their mothers suffer slowed development, sleep disturbance and feel helpless, fearful, depressed and anxious.

Studies show that these children also suffer psycho somatic symptoms; they have more hospitalization, colds, sore throats and bedwetting than children from peaceful homes. Whether or not they are physically abused by either parent is less important than the psychological scars they bear from watching their fathers beat their mothers. Children who live in a home where abuse occurs are always affected by it. It is easy to understand that children who are abused suffer a great deal from this abuse. However, direct witnessing of the abuse of their mother affects the children in a similar manner to children who are abused. Some of the most traumatizing experiences are when children are themselves abused and also witness the abuse of their mothers.

These are instances of double traumatic whammies. Initially, children exposed to violence experience trauma, shock, fear and guilt. As children grow older, they feel guilty about their inability to prevent the violence, loose respect for their apparently helpless mother, and feel anger towards her. Boys are aggressive and disruptive, fighting with their siblings and schoolmates; girls become clinging, withdrawn in a shell, passive, and anxious. Children of all ages also present somatic complaints, ranging from insomnia, diarrhea and generally higher rates of illness in infants to higher incidences of colds, sore throats, abdominal pain, asthma, headaches and bedwetting in older children.

Part of the pattern of spousal abuse may itself involve sleep or nutritional deprivation for the mother or children. Not surprisingly, then, children who are exposed to violence between their parents also experience delayed development of speech, motor and cognitive skills, and their school peer performance may suffer. However, Judith Wallerstein Cahn, , one of the few researchers to track such children over time, has found that children actually benefit when they are geographically separated from psychiatrically disturbed parents.

This child is, for all intents and purposes, exposed to the same milieu as the battered child. Children exposed to wife abuse may be similar to those children described and suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Growing up in a violent family creates problems in later life because of the defective values, attitudes and coping mechanisms it teaches. Children who see their own parents engage in violence, as well as children who are abused, are more likely to be violent with their mates. The more violence they see, the lesser they will tolerate as adults. More often than not the children in a violent family attribute all power to be on the side of the wrongdoer. The witnessing pattern of violence reinforces the lesson that violence is an acceptable solution.

The children also learn unhealthy, untrue notions of sex and love, and equate relating in a sexual manner with rape, that is, as an expression of power or anger. Children of violent fathers are more likely to be violent themselves. Thus, for children who live with a batterer, the continuing pattern of violence reinforces the lesson that violence is acceptable and puts them at risk for becoming abusers. The first national survey on family violence suggested the connection between violence in childhood and the later use of violence. The sons of the most violent parents had a rate of wife beating times greater than that of the sons of non-violent parents. Two were the use of other forms of violence or aggression the use of violence against children and sexual aggression against wives.

The other was having witnessed parental violence as a child or adolescent. Wallerstein and Blakeslee Cahn, found that almost half of the children from abusive families became abusive in their own intimate relationships later on. Some suggest that the correlation is higher for boys becoming aggressors than girls becoming victims. Domestic violence has a severe impact on children. Children are often bystanders to the abuse. In addition to the psychological abuse, children also experience physical abuse. Children in abusive homes are at times isolated, forced to engage in the abuse of the other parent, threatened, interrogated, abducted, or physically and sexually abused. The abuse has irreparable effects on the minds and futures of these children.

The damage incurred by children due to domestic violence can start before birth. A study revealed that more birth defects result from the mother being battered than from the combination of all diseases for which pregnant women are normally immunized. Thirty-seven percent of all obstetrical patients across ethnic, class, and educational lines are physically abused while expectant. Domestic violence is an epidemic. All institutions of our society must collaborate in an effort to contain and eradicate it. If action is not taken, domestic violence will continue to claim thousands of lives each year, as well as damage the futures of many more.

Violence in the home translates into violence in the streets. A high proportion of juveniles who commit serious crimes come from homes where physical and sexual abuse of spouses and children had occurred. Violence, like the first alphabets, is something which children learn first and best at home. Little boys who witness or suffer domestic abuse too often grow up to be batterers themselves; little girls grow up to be victims. Breaking this vicious cycle is one of our most important goals. But the effects of domestic violence spread much farther than that.

Children who experience abuse themselves, or who are helpless witnesses to violence against a parent, suffer shame, guilt, rage and self-hatred; a boiling mix of pent up emotions that especially during adolescence, can erupt into violence and serious criminal behavior. If adults can reduce the incidence of domestic violence — physical and sexual against children — they can help reduce the incidence of crime outside the home as well. Most of the focus has been on how to punish such behavior. More attention has to be paid on its prevention.

The solutions are not easy. But surely one place to commence is the very first place that young people witness or experience violence. It is in the home that many young people learn that guns, knives or fists are a means of power, aggression and control. It is in the home where they learn to take out their rage and frustration on helpless and innocent bystanders. It is in the home where they learn that violence works to intimidate. It is up to resident adults to teach a different and sobering lesson. And they can possibly do that when they begin treating domestic violence as the serious criminal behavior that it actually is. Children can be more distressed by seeing someone they hold dear being beaten or being hit, a study has found. Half of the children in the survey had seen adults fight.

Many of these fights were physical and violent, and most happened in their homes. The children rated seeing violence between adults as among the four worst things that had happened to them. Ms Maxwell said this underlined the serious effect domestic violence had on children, even if they were not the ones being hit. New Zealand had a high level of family violence, and children witnessed this violence. Children found it deeply upsetting to see violence inflicted on someone close to them. It made them feel fearful and uncertain about their place in the world. Ms Maxwell urged schools, parents and other relatives to notice if children were the victims of violence, whether it be domestic violence or bullying, and respond positively to such children.

To help children deal with a violent event, adults could encourage them to talk about what had happened, detect their inner feelings taking them seriously and respond measure and provide to their need for safety and protection. Children should be imparted skills to cope with their feelings and ways to make themselves safer, including knowing who to turn to if they felt frightened or threatened. New Zealanders must do more to prevent children suffering psychologically from exposure to domestic violence, Child Youth and Family says.

In a speech, to the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers recently, CYFS head social worker Shannon Pakura warned children were the silent victims of domestic violence. Older children were likely to cope better with domestic violence because of support outside the home, but their educational achievements could nosedive. Ms Pakura said everybody in the community needed to be more aware of domestic violence. Growing up in a family with domestic violence has devastating effects. She also pledged to improve the standards of social workers. A registration scheme with focus on raising professional standards would help achieve this. Forde, When women are battered, children in the home are profoundly affected. Almost all of the children know about the abuse. Even when they do not see the abuse, they are profoundly affected by it.

Many violent fathers inadvertently injure children while throwing about furniture and other household objects while abusing the mother. The youngest children tend to sustain the most serious injuries, such as concussions, broken shoulders and ribs in such violent throw outbursts. In addition, abusers of women often deliberately abuse their children. More than half of woman abusers beat their children; Walker found 53 percent; Bowker, Arbitell and McFerron found 70 percent. These studies also found that the more severe the wife beating, the more severe was the deliberate child abuse, with the strongest indicators being severity and frequency of wife beating and the frequency of marital rape. In homes where domestic violence occurs, children are abused at a rate 1, percent higher than the national average.

In addition, significant numbers of men who batter women also sexually abuse their children, especially their daughters. Fathers sexually abuse children in a quarter to a third of all domestic abuse cases. Studies show that almost half of all battered women were sexually abused as children, generally by a male relative. Studies of children who are sexually abused usually by their father find that the fathers frequently beat their mothers and sometimes the children as well. Hewitt and Friedrich reported on midwestern children under the age of five seen at hospitals for suspected child sexual abuse. Of the 64 children who probably had been sexually abused, Where the sexual abuse was uncertain, Domestic abuse has severe psychological effects on children even when the children are not themselves physically being abused.

Pagelow found that children show insecurity through clinging, crying, nervousness, and a constant need to know where their mothers are. Like Walker, Pagelow found that children suffer fear, terror and guilt because of the violence they observe. Sons become aggressive, act out, display disobedience and behave defiantly and destructively, whereas daughters become depressed, withdrawn, clinging, and dependent. Some adolescent boys assault their mothers and siblings. Older children, especially girls, take on the burden of protecting their younger siblings whenever the father resorts to violence against them. They feel constrained and are apprehensive of leaving home. Walker found that children carry the psychological scars from watching their fathers beat their mothers.

They learn to abet in a dishonest conspiracy of silence. They learn to lie to prevent inappropriate behavior, and they learn to suspend and suppress fulfillment of their needs rather than risk another violent confrontation. They expend a lot of energy avoiding problems, living in a world of their own make-believe. Children also become homeless as a result of domestic violence. Woman battering is the cause of homelessness for half of all homeless families in America. In the year before they entered that location, two-thirds of these children had changed homes twice. Over 85 percent had stayed twice with friends or relatives. Some had even resorted to living in the family car when shelters were unavailable. Three-quarters of the children over the age of fifteen had run away twice a year.

Most of these children had lost on considerable schooling because of the frequent moves and the disruption, or because they were too ashamed or embarrassed to go to school, having fled home without their books, money, or any changes of clothing. Despite an enabling federal law which allows homeless children to attend school in the district where they presently or previously resided, many children are kept out of school for security reasons, because violent fathers use school records or the presence of the children at school to track down the accompanying mothers or kidnap the children to duress the separated family portion.

Other children are unable to enroll in schools in their new district because they lack birth certificates, immunization records or other documentation- paperwork usually unavailable or left behind when fleeing homes from abuse. Abusers, who are extremely domineering and controlling, frequently keep or destroy such documentation as part of their control strategy of the family, thus preventing or seriously delaying the receipt of either welfare benefits or housing assistance by the breakaway family. Those children who do go to school are often stigmatized socially, and they are usually too distracted and inattentive to learn much.

Many women become homeless when courts award custody to their batterers or put their children in foster care. Such custody changes are especially likely to happen when the child has been sexually abused by the batterer, because many judges refuse to believe that fathers sexually abuse their children, or believe the myth that mothers fabricate allegations of sexual abuse in order to gain tactical advantage in divorce or custody cases. Yet studies belie these myths and find that only a few allegations do not involve abuse, and even those allegations are made in good faith. Even if she receives AFDC because she has children from another man, her economic situation may so worsen that she is still rendered homeless.

Babies as young as two weeks who witness domestic violence need as much help as their conflicting parents, a psychologist told a conference on violence. Dr McIntosh said recent research had shown that infants affected by violence in the home were far younger than was previously thought. Children who are abused or just witness domestic violence are likely to then become perpetrators of violence in later life. More immediately, child witnesses suffer developmental and mental health problems, Dr McIntosh said. In later years, children had difficulty dealing with earlier accumulated fear and aggression, Dr McIntosh said.

Parents, who were themselves trying to cope with domestic violence were not quite in a position to help their children overcome the effects of trauma, Dr McIntosh said. Dr McIntosh called for increased support and attention to be given to victims of domestic violence who were as young as pre-school age. Dr McIntosh said it was wrong to think that support for the parents involved in domestic violence would automatically help their children. Ms Peltola said often children could be injured because they try to intervene when their parents are fighting. Committee chairperson of the event, April Pham, says 63 per cent of the children murdered in Australia in the past decade died at the hands of a parent.

Ms Pham said changes to the Family Law Act and massive cuts to legal aid mean an increasing number of children are placed in the doubtful care of violent fathers Children … violence, AAP, Researchers say family violence occurs in 3 million to 4 million homes in the United States, and they estimate that 3. Their mother fatally stabbed, their father charged with her murder, Sydney, 9, and Justin, 6, have been enveloped by an extended family and apparently shielded from the publicity. Like their parents, Sydney and Justin Simpson now join the victims of domestic abuse in this country. The effects of domestic violence on children caught in the crossfire have been well documented. Simpson has pleaded not guilty in the slayings June 12 of his former wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Lyle Goldman.

No one can presume to know how the children are faring; they are in the care of their maternal grandparents. During O. But, according to studies of battered women, anywhere from 68 percent to 87 percent of their children witness the abuse. Even if a child does not observe it, he or she instinctively knows it is happening. They want to hold on to the good part of their parents. But they have to go back to the grieving process. You have to help a child work through the process that what his father did was bad, but I can still love my dad. A child can learn to batter or learn how to take it. Millions of children may be suffering long-term psychological and emotional damage as a result of being exposed to frightening scenes of domestic violence.

Many become aggressive, fearful, withdrawn and anxious, with severe sleeping problems. They experience difficulties at school and find it hard to form close relationships, a new study has found. The research by NCH Action for Children -examining the effects of domestic violence on children-found that two-thirds of the children of battered mothers had witnessed their mothers being beaten and more than a quarter had themselves been attacked. One in ten mothers surveyed said they had been raped in front of their children.

The survey, based on the experiences of mothers with children, also showed that their exposure to violence was prolonged — the average length of violent relationships was seven years. Based on reported domestic violence, , children are growing up in an atmosphere of fear and violence. But with most going unreported the figure could well be the tip of an iceberg, Tom White, director of NCH Action for Children , said Mills, The survey found that four out of five mothers believed that the violence had inflicted long-term damage on their children. Nearly one-third reported that their children had subsequently turned violent and aggressive. he would run up and punch you. The survey had found that all the children in the families were aware of the violence.

Even if they had not witnessed it directly, 99 per cent had seen their mother upset or crying. In the recent tragedies that affected the Asia-pacific communities, children were clearly the direct victims of domestic violence in their homes. In the worst possible scenario for children affected by domestic violence, six innocent children were senselessly murdered and seven children were left orphaned. This surely must have happened after a lifetime of witnessing and bearing the burden of the violence in their homes. These tragedies demonstrate how serious an issue domestic violence is in our community. They also demonstrate the close relationship between domestic violence and child endangerment.

How many more of our children are struggling daily with violence at home, as primary victims or as witnesses to beatings, punches, straps, and verbal threats? Many children living in violent homes face a double whammy-not only are they witnessing the violence; they are often the direct victims of the violence. Studies have shown that children from violent homes are 15 times more likely to be abused or neglected than children from non-violent homes. Several factors contribute to this. As a bystander during a violent episode, a child may become the unintended victim. He also may get injured when he attempts to protect his mother from continued aggression.

Children are sometimes put in the middle of fights and used by one parent against the other, forcing them to take sides in arguments. A study indicated that nearly half of men who abuse their wives or girlfriends also abuse their children. Also, women who are battered are less able to care for their children since they are distracted as they are busy dealing with their own physical and emotional injuries and mental states. Estimates vary on the number of children who witness domestic violence, from 3. Many parents fail to see or minimize the extent to which their children are affected by violence in their homes until it is too late.

The effects of being witnesses and victims of domestic violence on children are enormous and lifelong. Violence witnessed at home is often repeated later in life. A study found that 75 percent of boys who witness parental abuse have demonstrable behavior problems Jaffe, et al. They are more likely to commit violent acts than those not abused. In another study, abused children were arrested by the police four times more often than non-abused children. They are depressed over their own helplessness. They are confused by their hatred and love for the abuser and blame themselves for not preventing the violence and even for causing it. They are so preoccupied with what is happening at home that they may not do well in school, and may drop out and participate in anti-social activities. They display adverse health symptoms ranging from sleep disorders, headaches, stomach aches, ulcers, and enuresis etc.

Children from violent homes develop coping skills to survive. They may take on roles and responsibilities of parents and give up being children much earlier than warranted. They keep harmful secrets and are seen but not heard. They cannot have friends over because of the need to hide the violence in their homes. They are fearful of expressing their feelings lest they provoke or expose. Children learn from their experiences and surroundings. Children from violent homes learn to express anger in ways that are violent and abusive. People must be careful about making rash judgments and penalizing battered women who neglect their children because of their own victimization.

The responsibility for battering must rest squarely on the shoulders of batterers. The legal profession is failing to protect millions of children each year from the devastating physical and psychological effects of seeing a parent battered, according to an American Bar Association ABA report. William Ide III, who commissioned the study. Many of the findings and recommendations of the above referred study on heightened awareness of the problem, tougher enforcement of existing laws, and additional training for Family Court judges dovetail with a five-part series published last year by The Record. The New Jersey Assembly approved a package of bills that included legislation-requiring sensitivity training for judges, police officers, and judicial personnel who handled cases of domestic violence.

The bills would add stalking to the list of offences defined as domestic violence, and also afford new protections to victims of abusive dating relationships. The report estimates that anywhere from 3. Researchers believe that 87 percent of the children in homes with domestic violence witness the abuse. The effects of domestic violence on children range from the physical, such as birth defects, to the psychological, which can include anxiety, aggression, behavioral problems, lowered self-esteem, stuttering, and depression, the report stated. Statistics released by the ABA show that children who witness domestic violence are likely to perpetuate the cycle:.

A great deal of research has addressed the effects of television violence on children, the impact of maltreatment on children, and the scope of violence among adolescents. There has, however, been less systematic research on the effects that witnessing violence has on young children. Research projects underway in the s in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Washington, DC, sought to gain a better understanding of children who witness violence. There are descriptions, in the literature, of children who have witnessed domestic violence. Methodological problems, however, exist with these studies. Most of these studies examined groups of children who were in domestic violence shelters, thereby making it difficult to determine whether behavior was the result of witnessing violence or was exacerbated by the stress of shelter living.

Sample sizes were small; few data were available about young children. Perhaps the most useful research about the effects of exposure to violence has been conducted by clinicians who were interested in learning more about the effects of trauma on children. Notable contributions in this area have come from Robert Pynoos and Lenore Terr Both researchers have provided in-depth looks at the effects of single disasters on children ranging in age from 5 to 12 years. Their findings have added greatly to the clinical understanding of post-traumatic stress disorder PTSD.

The effects of chronic exposure to community violence have been less well studied. James Garbarino and others have described eloquently the difficulties of growing up in environments of chronic danger. There is, however, a lack of systematic research that assesses the impact of growing up with this kind of violence. When children live in violent surroundings this affects them as individuals, but their bond with their primary caretaker is also affected. When abuse of the mother makes her unavailable to the child, not only is the child directly affected, but the bond formation also suffers a severe setback.

It is important that the child be allowed to form an unfettered and strong bond with the primary caretaker. The courts must consider the severity of harm involved in separating a child from the primary caretaker when making custody decisions. The courts should not separate the child from the primary caretaker unless the primary caretaker is shown to be patently unfit. The parent to whom the children primarily look for day-to-day physical care, emotional nurturing, and approval is a significant figure to them. Mothers today are still more often the primary child rearing parents. As in all families, bonding to the mother begins before birth. Undeniable biological facts — that only the woman carries the children, undergoes childbirth, and nurses the children create a much higher likelihood that the mother will have a stronger psychological tie with the infant than the father at the time of birth.

Yet continuity of care with the primary caretaker should not be confused with constant availability. These are two different aspects. The research on parents in violent families suggests that there is likely to be a substantial difference between the batterer and the victim both in their actual bonding and capacities for future bonding to the children. He may try to exert control in the same intrusive manner as he had always used with the mother. A compiled battery addressing the issue of domestic violence was administered to 30 randomly chosen children frequenting public places public parks,gyms,sports stadium etc.

The method of administration essentially comprised of multiple face to face interactions with teenagers over a period of one month seeking predetermined times for interactions after first random interaction. Based on the responses of interactions various responses to battery questions were recorded. The children who fell in the random sample were aged years. Of these 17 were boys and 13 girls. The sample comprised of 13 white and 17 ethnic background teenagers. The random sample had 12 ghetto residencies, 11 apartment residencies and 7 shelter residencies. All of the shelter residents reported domestic violence in their erstwhile homes. It was surprising to note that even those ghetto residents and apartment residents who had either reported mild frequency of domestic violence or no occurrence were also gang members but they had not been involved in any crimes.

A few of them wistfully recollected their high achievements from the period when their familial environments were peaceful. All of them admitted to have used firearms since violence began plaguing their homesteads on more than one occasion-particularly in gang environment. The recall rate of number of incidents of violence was highest in the age group years and poorest in the age group years thus not supporting the conclusion that younger kids are able to recollect such details comprehensively. They tended to grope and recollect events that too vaguely. Even recent incidents were not clearly recollected. Only those having suffered high frequency of domestic violence were examined from this point of view.

Girls suffering from high frequency of domestic violence were more locked, so to say in their homes when compared to boys. The data summarizing major conclusions is contained in tables 1 to 10 at Appendix A. These conclusions more or less support the findings carried in other studies and research. Recognition of the surprising depth and intensity with which violence permeates the American home began to emerge over the past two decades. Society began to slowly and reluctantly unlock the secret doors of family life. Reports of woman battery, child abuse and incest continue to increase in number. These crimes are reported more, in part, because the public has become aware that these acts are, in fact, crimes punishable under the law.

As these family secrets are now seen as crimes, people are more likely to report what had previously been hidden and denied. Nevertheless a great need still exists to educate the public, as well as law enforcement personnel, child welfare personnel, judges, lawyers, doctors and mental health professionals. All types of reported child abuse cases increased from , in to 1. The number of reported child sexual abuse cases rose from 12, in to approximately , in Studies show that children are often involved, either directly or indirectly, in family violence, and are often the subject of the initiating arguments that lead to the violence.

One study indicates that at least 3. From interviews with children, however, it is show that children can accurately describe incidents of violence. The range of direct witnessing ranges from a fleeting glance to witnessing the murder of their mother. In what promised to be a landmark decision in Massachusetts and important in the rest of the nation, the Massachusetts Appeals Court ruled that domestic violence must be given substantial consideration in custody determinations. In doing so, the court recognized that domestic violence directly causes harm to the child who observes it and may reflect on the parenting capability of the perpetrator of the violence. The case arose out of a complaint for paternity that was filed by a father 24 hours after the mother obtained an abuse prevention order that required the father to vacate the home they shared and gave her custody of the minor child, a boy, age 9 at the time of separation.

Peter G. Children of that age also learn that if the person who has been abusive during the relationship receives custody for them … it says that the violence has been condoned or reinforced in some way; that if somebody is really aggressive and intimidating, they can eventually get what they want. Therefore, the Appeals Court acknowledges not only the need to examine evidence of direct harm to the child, which was also evident in this case but not considered significant by the judge, but the effect of domestic violence within the family unit on the children exposed to it. In fact, the Court cites Dr. For the first time, the trial court is being directed to examine an area that previously has been ignored, or more often misunderstood. Although the Massachusetts law does not specifically cover paternity cases, applying the rational of a similar case, the Massachusetts law, arguably requires that the same rights and protections be afforded to a child born in or out of wedlock.

While this opened the door for the trial court to consider domestic violence on the issue of permanent custody, it did not promote consistency in the treatment of this issue by trial judges, some of who did not understand the effect of violence on the children or mistakenly believed that domestic violence was no longer an issue after the parties separated. In fact, the evidence indicated that the father used fear and intimidation to control the tangible duties of parenting by violent and abusive behavior, and that the mother could claim only those areas that the father was unwilling to take.

The specific risk to the child that were alleged by the mother, through her expert witness, were the likelihood based on past experience that the father would continue to verbally and physically abuse the child, and the likelihood that the child would adopt these inappropriate behaviors in his future relationships and become a batterer as an adult, thereby perpetuating the cycle of violence represented in this family. While the Appeals Court talks about the impact of domestic violence on the parenting capabilities of the father, it does not rule out that the father could obtain custody.

The Gender Bias Study also made the following pertinent findings relative to domestic violence and custody of children as argued to the Appeals Court by the mother in this case:. Although this decision involved the paternity case, it is clear from the opinion that it has application in all cases involving custody of children, whether marital or non-marital. Domestic violence is a societal problem that requires a multi-disciplinary approach to solve. It requires attorneys and judges to join together with mental health professionals to first identify and then protect its victims, including the children. Once we acknowledge the potential harm to the child, appropriate services must be provided to protect the child. This requires that the trial court fashion judgments that will address treatment for the batterer, and counseling and protection for the victim and children.

The need to protect victims necessitates examining the need to supervised visitation. In this particular case, the domestic violence expert stated his opinion that supervised visitation was warranted if the father was not in counseling for batterers and capable of acknowledging his inappropriate behavior. However, services for batterers are not readily available throughout the Commonwealth, which makes protection even more critical for victims and their children. The United States Commission on Civil Rights Cahn, indicated that the generational cycle of violence should be broken by focusing on the children of abusive families. In custody cases involving domestic violence judicial process can be best accomplished by placing the children with the non-abusing parent for several reasons.

Battered women themselves usually do not come from violent homes; batterers do. Thus, violent behavior and tolerance for violence is less ingrained in the mothers than in the fathers. Abusers, on the other hand, are poor candidates for counseling. They are unlikely to believe their conduct is wrong or should be changed, and so are less likely than their mates to break the pattern of violence. There is a high correlation between spouse abuse and child abuse. Men who abuse their wives are often also violent towards their children. Therefore the custody decisions should be grounded on the realities of all of the above stated reasons in order to get secure environment for their children. Several other studies support the correlation theory.

Abusive tactics were such as to result in injuries viz. from kicking to the use of a weapon. While After completing a follow-up on the women when they left the shelter, it was concluded that the data provide encouraging evidence that the risk of child abuse may be significantly reduced following the intervention of shelter staff and services. The no-violence policies at shelters, and the assistance which shelter staff provide mothers seeking financial and emotional independence, are two helpful features of shelter intervention that may reduce the risk of child abuse. Another study compared 87 servicemen who had been reported and confirmed as batterers, and 95 who had not been.

Using the Child Abuse Potential Inventory CAPI , the researchers found that The CAPI, developed in , is a item, self-administered screening tool, which requires the individual to agree or disagree with various statements. The greater the husband dominance, the greater the likelihood of child abuse. The more serious the wife abuse, the more serious the child abuse was likely to be. In Bonner County, Idaho, where no domestic violence program existed prior to a rural award, advocates respond with law enforcement to domestic violence calls and provide outreach and follow-up services to victims. Violence Against Women Act VAWA also targets children. Grants are made available to limit the effect of violence on children, including runaways and homeless children, and to create safe places for children.

VAWA funds have also supported the opening of a shelter for battered women and their children. In the first year, advocates served victims, and the shelter served 65 women and 67 children. In , the advocates served victims, and the shelter served 56 women and 64 children. In rural Massachusetts, health and human service providers, law enforcement officials, clergy, and others are receiving training to address domestic violence and child victimization in their communities. Rural communities are reaching farther to respond to child abuse and to identify how technology can help address the geographic isolation that limits services.

Many rural areas are seeking to establish supervised visitation centers, where court-ordered visitation can occur without putting children at risk.

Violence has become a characteristic of the culture and society of America. It includes, among others, reports of tourists murdered randomly in Florida, a young mother killing her two young children, a society whose popular heroes are aggression incarnate in portrayals played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sylvester Stallone, and a society whose children have facile access to fire arms. The U. societal violence has also surrounded family life. Violence slips quietly and firmly through TV and its contents into the living spaces. This source misleads viewers by embracing unrealistic and filmic use of violence in real-life circumstances in homes and outside. Viewers invariably have the entire family and perhaps none of the family members escape this all pervasive and negative influence.

Children are increasingly experiencing real-life violence with impressive and tender psyches, either in their homes, streets, schools, workplaces, and almost everywhere. This violence has not only taken on epidemic proportions, but is also a sad and painful reflection on our culture when kids are the recipients of violence, especially in the home setting. An environment which is otherwise supposed to protect and nurture young ones instead works to leave deep scars of hostile violence. To top it all provocations may be extremely trivial. The United States US has the highest homicide rate in the world.

The US homicide rate for young men is 73 times greater than that observed in comparable industrialized nations. Largely uncontrolled proliferation of guns and other lethal weapons is linked directly, for one, to the increased homicide rates among children and for two, to the numbers of violent incidents that children may witness. On an average each day in the US, 9 children are murdered, guns wound 30 children, and children are arrested for violent crimes. As the impact of violence on young children is the focus of this study, it is important to consider the culture in which children and their families are embedded. The social history of the US has always given more emphasis to traditions of individual rights and individualism over any perceived or real collective good.

This philosophical stance underlies the tolerance of violence against women and the practices of corporal punishment in families. Historically, the emphasis on individual rights dictated that a man had unfettered rights on affairs of his household and that issues in family discipline were not the business of government or the courts. Prior to the late s, children had few rights distinct from their families of birth. In fact it is an irony of societal logic that agencies were established to protect the rights of animals before agencies were established to protect the rights of children. It was not until the s that state agencies were set up with specific legal mandates to protect children from familial abuse and neglect.

This historical tradition of the supremacy of individual rights also contributed to the inability of the US to regulate gun ownership and possession. It is within this culture that families raise children. The term violence encompasses a broad spectrum of behaviors and events, some of which are beyond the scope of this chapter. This chapter focuses on family and community violence. It also includes a perspective on violence in the media. Family violence must, by definition, include child maltreatment and spousal abuse. Community violence involves attacks, shootings and violence related to drugs and gangs.

Author has specific interest in the impact on children when they are mere witnesses to domestic violence. Physical scars of violence as recipients are separate from the psychological scars impressed by an act of violence being witnessed. The latter are deeply rooted and long undetected and find expression elsewhere in reactionary and adjusted violent behaviour. This is particularly true of children who have delicate and impressionable psyches and develop childhood memory bank of violence and use it for seeking solutions to adult situations when they grow up. Such children are the special focus of this chapter. Media violence is the most ubiquitous source of violence coming across majority of children.

An average child views about 12, acts of violence on television each year. In the United States, an estimated 1. One third of all child abuse victims are younger than 1 year of age. An additional 3. Nearly one half of the men who abuse their female partners also abuse their children. It transpires that domestic violence is an equal opportunity phenomenon and occurs in rural and urban areas quite regardless or either the class or ethnicity. Several myths about violence in the lives of children and families bear careful consideration.

The first myth is that young children, because of their age and developmental stage are more inure than older children, when exposed to violence. Clinical experience suggests otherwise and reveals that young children, who witness violent events, are deeply affected by such witnessing; particularly when either the perpetrator or the victim of violence happens to be a family member. Young children also demonstrate a remarkable capacity for maintaining memory of traumatic events. It seems children keep substantial family secrets without even the knowledge of adult family.

It is not uncommon for a parent to report that his or her child did not see or hear a violent episode in the home. Separate interviews with the child reveal the opposite: The child gives vivid details about the violent incident. Denial and minimization also occur with professionals who work with young children. At some level, such denial is understandable. Adults wish that children did not see violence; it is a reminder to them of their failure to provide adequate protection for children. A second myth is that violence is solely an urban problem. Violence has touched the lives of families and children across the United States in rural areas, in suburbs, and in inner cities. Domestic violence can occur anywhere. Child abuse and community violence occur with more frequency in areas where there are high concentrations of people with inadequate housing and income and high rates of drug abuse.

This correlation exhibits the need to address the issues of poverty and inequity in the United States as one strategy for reducing violence. A third myth is that violence is a racial problem that exists primarily in ethnic communities. Research suggests that violence is more a function of poverty than race. When people at the same income level are compared, few differences among races are found. This finding suggests that the context of poverty and financial deprivation, and not race, is the main risk factor for violence. Courts must be forthright about such issues for the cause of dispensing appropriate justice. It also requires judges to reconsider myths they may have about victims of domestic violence.

The tradition of family privacy, of a separate and private sphere for family life, is deeply embedded in the law. In combination with this traditional reluctance to intervene in the family sphere, is an inexplicable focus in custody decision-making only on parental behavior that affects the child. This focus, together with no-fault divorce which excludes evidence of fault , provides an obfuscating justification for judges to squarely reject evidence of domestic violence as irrelevant. By examining only factors that affect the child, courts can continue to ignore the pervasiveness of domestic violence and refuse to peer behind the marital curtain into the domestic violence morass.

Judicial reluctance to intervene in the family is also encouraged by a general misunderstanding of domestic violence and battered woman. There is a general belief that if the woman was seriously abused she would leave the family sphere. If she stays, then it is presumed that the abuse did not occur. Under these conditions, even if the female can provide reliable proof that she has been battered, a tribunal can nevertheless reject the seriousness of the accusations, blame the victim for enabling the abuse to proceed, or even think that she has consented. Finally, as with child sexual abuse, courts may think that females make accusations of abuse in order either to obtain an benefit in legal proceedings or to retain some kind of vindictive intent.

A major part of the problem is that people can not sympathize with the fact that victimized females may tend to deny the truth because it is simply too terrible or embarrassing to acknowledge it. Those who believe that battered women lie about the violence against them fail to understand the impact of domestic violence on the lives of mothers and children, and instead rely on their own stereotypes and beliefs about battered women and their families. Based on their misconceptions about what kinds of females are being battered or the presence of battering and its impacts on kids, judges continue to create decisions that may not be in the best interests of the child ; even if they give custody to a battered woman, they may not properly safeguard her with regulations on visitation.

This is difficult. Judges must consciously uncover the fact that the battering exists, must accept that this battering adversely affects the child, and only then they should craft decisions reflecting this reality. The last two decades have been associated with ever more frequent reports in the scholarly and press literature regarding instances of family violence. Initially, children of battered women were recognized as affected by violence only when they too, generally inadvertently, became injured during a violent episode. Researchers now suspect that children who witness physical abuse of their mothers may substantially outnumber survivors of child abuse. Carlson estimates that at least 3. Exactly how much children see or hear of the battering of their mothers is unknown.

In 41 percent of the national disturbances in which police intervened, Davidson revealed that kids were present. The extent of the scope and effect of family violence on the children of battered women is only now being comprehended for its adverse impacts. The understanding in respect of children of battered women and their responses to domestic violence is fast developing. Although some children manifest signs of distress, anxiety, and worry, others are able to overcome the deleterious effects of family violence with the help of inner resources and the support of caring people and support organizations. Knowledge of these factors offers helpful suggestions in carrying out nursing practice with battered women and their children.

Those who care for battered women and their children must seek them out, listen, and offer information, encouragement, and understanding. In short counseling empathy should be of very robust standards. The precise impact on children observing the abuse of their mothers is unclear. In addition, interviews with children often reveal that children were much more aware of the violence in their homes than their parents believed. Multiple studies have stated that children who come from violent homes are also likely to experience violence in future relationships. However, not all sons growing up in violent homes become batterers when they grow up, and in fact many siblings of batterers may live peacefully in non-violent marriages.

Although specific numbers are not reported in the literature, Stark and Flitcraft maintain that to conclude that violence in childhood definitively produces violence in adult lives too is erroneous. Traumatic consequences have been reported for children who are either abused themselves or have observed their mothers being abused. This is especially true in case of young children. Stark and Flitcraft , in a feminist analysis of mothers of child abuse victims, concluded that battering is the most common and perhaps leading context for child abuse, and that the battering man is also the typical child abuser. Initial reports about children of battered women tended to focus upon their presumed problems.

The source of these difficulties was either explicitly or implicitly identified as the violence in their homes. Emery concluded that children from homes characterized by interparental conflict are at greater risk than are children from either the broken or even the intact homes that are relatively harmonious.

Current partner Previous partner Percentage of children When children are exposed to violence, they encounter numerous difficulties in their various levels of development. Changes in state law and their own procedures have made it easier to track and prosecute abusers and to protect their victims. That is why it is important to report about the violence to the police and support groups in order to be safe and start a new life. Even recent incidents were not clearly recollected. You have to help a child work through the process that what his father did was bad, but I can still love my dad.

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