Family Ties Domestic Violence and Children

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Family TiesDomestic Violence and Children

• Mary Hargrave River Oak
• Nilda Valmores My Sisters House
• Gina Roberson Child Abuse Prevention Center

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Domestic Violence is ongoing pattern of coercive
control

• Intimidating behaviors are those that instill
  fear in others
• Psychological abuse is an attack on others self
  confidence/esteem
• Inflated self-entitlement leads to demanding
  services from another
• Physical abuse can vary by type, duration,
  severity

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What we know

• 20-25 of adult women report that they have been
  physically abused by a partner
• 95 of reported perpetrators are male
• Declines in middle and later life
• Higher levels of economic dependency predict
  lower rates of escape from violent relationship
• Much if our information comes from women who are
  in shelters
• More recent evidence links dominance to violence

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Domestic violence

• Present in 1 of 5 cases referred to CPS
• 47 of cases classified as high risk
• Or 30-60 of children of women who were abused,
  were physically abused themselves
• High risk for re-referrals after case reopening
  in moderate to high risk cases.
• Associated with maternal depression
• If also associated with drug or alcohol abuse,
  the there is a lack of supervision of the
  children and increased uses of the ER for
  injuries to the children

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Issues for violent parent

• Childhood victimization-
• Inaccurate displacement of anger
• Childhood is training ground for violence
• Unmet developmental needs
• Only safe feeling is anger
• Anxious obsessive-ness need for control
• Power and control

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Issues for violent parent

• Rigid gender roles male entitlement, poor self
  esteem, sexual jealousy, isolating
• Encapsulated thinking externalize issues and
  fail to see the link between these factors
• Skills deficits lack of empathy, nonassertive,
  communication deficit, poor problem-solving
  skills.
• Substance abuse

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Coercion

• Using physical assaults against anyone including
  hitting or slapping
• Making others afraid by looks, gestures, actions
• Smashing things, destroying property
• Making or carrying out threats to hurt others
• Threatening to leave others, to commit suicide,
  to report others to authorities, displaying
  weapons
• Making others drop charges

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Coercion vs. negotiation

• Seeking mutually satisfying solutions to conflict
• Accepting change
• Seeing others point of view
• Being willing to compromise
• Stilling the first reaction of anger

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Effects on children

• Distant and violent parent
• Inconsistent and stressed parent
• Disrupted relationships
• 30-60 are also physically, sexually, and/or
  emotionally abused as well as witnessing abuse
• Witness only has significantly poor coping ,
  strained relationships

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Effects of the children Exposure to violence can
take many forms

• Prenatal injury
• Witness
• Intervene
• Overheard
• Family terror
• Neglect, isolated family
• Corruption
• Denied emotional responsiveness

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Life Lesson of Domestic Violence

• Victimization by the very people who are looked
  to for protection and safety
• Violence works to get what you want

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Children in Violent Families

• Higher risk of experiencing multiple forms of
  abuse probability of child abuse is 31 higher
  when partner abuse is present
• Particularly physical abuse
• Double whammy effect (see and experience)
• Significant overall disruptions in childrens
  psychosocial functioning

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Impact on children

• Teaching that violence is a means of influence
  and conflict management in close relationships
• By adolescence. Violent behavior may look very
  much like adult violence

• Children with Conduct Disorder diagnosis may be
  learning a coercive way to deal with others
• Interference with non-abusive parents employment
  can have economic impact on child

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Younger children

• More repeatedly exposed.
• More vulnerable
• Greater distress and regression
• Poor school performance and behavior
• Look for the child with a conduct disorder
  diagnosis interventions done early with these
  children have been demonstrated to work.

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Longer term effects on children

• Expect others to have hostile intentions
• Difficulties with solving social problems
• In adolescence, seek partners with the same view
  of the world
• Girls run boys condone alcohol and violence

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Effects of being in a violent home

• 56.4 impaired relationships with family and
  friends
• 41.2 emotional and behavioral development is
  impaired
• 20-25 unmet educational and health needs

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To quote

• a history of aggressive coercive family process
  sets in motion developmental pathway for children
  that ensnares them in a cycle of interpersonal
  disadvantage as they transition to peer
  relationships and later to the task of romantic
  relationships youth with aggressive family
  histories tend to gravitate toward one another.
  Ehrensaft, 2008

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Nilda Valmores

• Programs for intervention in DV
• Cultural factors present in DV families

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Gina Roberson

• Statewide trends in domestic violence response
• Local adaptation of proposed protocol for law
  enforcement response to DV