Wolfe / Jaffe / Campbell Growing Up with Domestic Violence

1. Auflage 2012
ISBN: 978-1-61334-336-4
Verlag: Hogrefe Publishing
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 6 - ePub Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 88 Seiten

Reihe: Advances in Psychotherapy - Evidence-Based Practice

Intimate partner violence (IPV) can have a profound impact on the children - this book shows to recognize these effects and provide effective clinical interventions and preventive measures.
This compact and easy-to-read text by leading experts shows practitioners and students how to recognize the impact of intimate partner violence (IPV) on children and youth and to provide effective clinical interventions and school-based prevention programs.
Exposure to IPV is defined using examples from different ages and developmental stages. The book describes the effects of exposure to IPV and reviews epidemiology and etiology. Its main focus is on proven assessment, intervention, and prevention strategies. Relevant and current theories regarding the impact of exposure on children and youth are reviewed, and illustrative real-life case studies from the clinical experiences of the authors are described.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wolfe, David A.

Jaffe, Peter G.

Campbell, Marcie

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychotherapie / Klinische Psychologie Kinder- und Jugendlichenpsychotherapie
• Medizin | Veterinärmedizin Medizin | Public Health | Pharmazie | Zahnmedizin Medizinische Fachgebiete Kinder- & Jugendpsychiatrie
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Arbeit/Sozialpädagogik Soziale Arbeit/Sozialpädagogik: Familie, Kinder, Jugendliche

Leseproben

1 Description Rayan’s mother, Trina, attends classes for English as a second language (ESL). Rayan’s father is fluent in English. He answered all the questions, rarely conferring with his wife. Trina drops Rayan off each day before ESL class. One morning, after being in the program for 1 month, Rayan becomes extremely upset. She clings to her mother, screams, and needs to be peeled off of her. This behavior reoccurs most mornings. Trina often has tears in her eyes and seems to hesitate as she leaves, and she is called out of her class periodically to calm Rayan down. Child care staff see this behavior as more extreme than the usual separation anxiety and that it seems to be lasting too long. Rayan usually cries all morning while her mother is away in class. Lately, there are times when Rayan calms to a whimper, but she never completely stops crying. She startles and will start to scream if there are any loud noises. She sits in the corner of the room. One day after class, Trina is asked if she and her husband can come in for a talk about Rayan. She quickly shakes her head at this suggestion. Her hands are shaking while she states that her husband should not be bothered with this. Trina starts to cry, saying that she will quit school to stay home with Rayan (Baker & Cunningham, 2005). From his earliest memory, 10-year-old Josh has heard and seen loud arguments and violence in his home. Many times he has seen his father hurt his mother and almost every day would hear him insult and demean her. Both Josh and his mother were intimidated by his anger and afraid of the repercussions if they did not comply with his increasingly irrational demands. The charges now before the court include assault with a weapon (a chair) and uttering death threats. A neighbor overheard shouting and called the police. Josh and his mother reluctantly gave statements. Josh’s video-recorded statement documented that he heard his father threaten to kill his mother. Josh’s older brother Albert was angry when he learned about the charges and blames both Josh and his mother. Mr. H. pleads not guilty. Ms. H. tearfully tells the prosecutor that she cannot remember the incident. The prosecutor reluctantly decides that Josh’s evidence is essential to the case. She will arrange for Josh to testify via closed-circuit television and ensure he has a support person. If necessary, she will use his video-recorded evidence. When Josh’s mother learns that Josh will be testifying, she is upset and angry that the system is meddling in “our own personal business.” Josh is worried and confused about his role in the prosecution. He knows he should tell the truth but worries about the consequences for his family and himself if he does. His mother does not want him to testify, and his brother said that it will be his fault if their father were to go to jail. He is not sure if he wants his father to return home, but is very worried about his reaction to seeing him testify. Josh feels confused and alone (Cunningham & Hurley, 2007). Mary Spenser was going through a difficult separation after years of putting up with domestic violence. She stayed for the sake of the children so they could have a father and financial support. She finally left her husband when she saw the impact of the violence on them – in her own words: “I looked in my kid’s eyes and I saw a look like ‘Mom, when am I going to be next?’” (Jaffe, Lemon, & Poisson, 2003). Case 20011 involved the homicide of two teenaged girls by their father, and his suicide. The perpetrator and his wife had been in a relationship for 16 years, during which they had separated on three occasions. He had a long history of medical disability, including chronic back pain, anxiety and depression, which prevented him from maintaining meaningful employment. His ongoing medical management for these difficulties appeared to be primarily through his family doctor, although he had several admissions to psychiatric facilities due to suicidal ideation. The perpetrator had an aggressive and controlling personality, and exhibited abusive language and physical abuse to his spouse. The children often witnessed harassment, threatening behavior, and even death threat utterances against their mother. Despite numerous incidents involving police and the courts, there were no formal court-ordered visitation/access arrangements in place, with the children opting to visit their father on a regular basis. During one such visit, the father accompanied by his two children, purposefully drove his vehicle into the path of an oncoming truck, killing all three. The perpetrator had left several suicide notes indicating his intent on taking his own life as well as his children’s (Ontario Domestic Violence Death Review Committee [DVDRC], 2007). Witnessing intimate partner violence in the home disrupts a child’s healthy development These four cases all illustrate the complexity of issues affecting children exposed to domestic violence. Not only do these cases demand the best clinical assessments and intervention planning to prevent tragedies, they require collaboration among different service providers in various systems (i.e., police, legal, childcare, education, mental health, child advocacy center, and domestic violence services). In the mid-1980s, the impact of domestic violence on children was gaining attention from researchers, practitioners, and policy makers (Jaffe, Wolfe, & Wilson, 1990; Strega, 2006). There was growing recognition that witnessing intimate partner violence (IPV) in the home disrupted a child’s healthy development, and could cause outcomes or consequences similar to those of children who had been physically abused (Jaffe, Wolfe, Wilson, & Zak, 1986). This concern fostered a growing need for assessment and intervention services for these children, as well as new legislation aimed at protecting children from exposure to domestic violence. With support, children are able to recover from exposure to violence The early research focused on children residing in shelters for abuse victims. These children often had to deal with multiple stressors in their lives beyond the violence, such as parental separation, poverty, and repeated disruptions in their daily lives. Some of these early research findings confirmed that the impact of domestic violence on children was often significant, but neither straightforward nor consistent. These studies implied that substantial harm to children was not necessarily inevitable or long-lasting. Like other adjustment problems in childhood, recovery from exposure to violence was significantly related to positive changes in family circumstances, perceived support from family and community members, and, of course, the absence of abuse or fearful events. As discussed in subsequent chapters, many of these early findings have been replicated and expanded, and have helped to unravel the complexity of this multifaceted relationship between children’s adjustment and exposure to domestic violence. There has been significant progress in our understanding of the detrimental effects of childhood exposure to domestic violence. For example, a search of PsycINFO and PubMed on children exposed to domestic violence reveals that research studies in this area have increased 20-fold since the early 1990s (see Figure 1). In conjunction with this growth in understanding, intervention programs for children and their parents have been implemented across North America and around the world. Legislative and policy changes have also been established to ensure that children receive the assistance they require. An estimated 15.5 million US children ages 3–17 years have been exposed to domestic violence at least once Estimating the prevalence of exposure to IPV is not straightforward. To obtain a rough estimate, researchers sometimes calculate the number of children exposed to IPV on the basis of national surveys or statistics on domestic violence incidents. Using this method, Carlson (1984) estimated that approximately 3.3 million children between the ages of 3 and 17 years in the United States were exposed to domestic violence each year. More recently, based on interviews derived from national sampling, 15.5 million children in the United States were estimated to be living in households in which domestic violence had occurred at least once in the previous year, and approximately 7 million children were exposed to severe domestic violence (McDonald, Jouriles, Ramisetty-Mikler, Caetano, & Green, 2006). The sample for this estimate included children between birth and 17 years and was based on reports from both partners in the home. Although we cannot conclude from these estimates that the problem has increased fivefold, there is a consensus that children exposed to IPV represent a significant population, only a fraction of whom may be identified when they present with diverse problems to various community services and agencies. Figure 1
Number of research studies on children exposed to domestic violence over the past 20 years (from PubMed and PsycINFO searches). Although domestic violence has been considered a crime in most states and provinces since the early 1980s, the focus has been on the adult victims and perpetrators, not the child witnesses. In the past, children exposed to domestic violence were seen as “secondary victims,” and some prosecutors were only able to use the children’s experiences as aggravating factors in sentencing perpetrators. However, some jurisdictions have since created legislation that views...