Children Exposed to Their Father’s Violence Against Their Mother: The Link Between the Children’s Perception of the Escalation and Their Experience of Complex Psychological, Physical, and Sexual Abuse

The present article explores how children exposed to their father’s violence toward their mother perceive the interparental conflict escalation process to all-out violence. It attempts to understand how the children’s perception affects the complexity of the harm done to them and to explore the relationship between this perception and child psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. In-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with 27 childre n of both genders, aged 7-12. They were sampled from a population of children growing up with family violence, based on social workers’ reports in violence prevention and treatment centers throughout Israel. The findings reveal a gap between how the children understand the parents’ relationship script and the actual script in which the parents act. Analysis of the children’s descriptions revealed two processes, which might explain the source of this gap: 1) Living in a reality ridden with violent conflicts, which directly affect the perception of violence as taken for granted; 2) The parents’ creation of a pseudo-normative reality, with accepted behavioral codes as an integral part of the escalation. The article discusses the way in which these processes, which distort the children’s sound reading of reality, may help to legitimize and explain the high percentage of child sexual abuse among this population. Practical implications of the findings are learned in this context. (from the article)