Kate* spent most of her childhood afraid. The violence in her home was so bad, she’d lie in bed bracing for what was to come. “It was scary,” she says. “I’d wake up and I’d already be having a panic attack, in fear of what the day is going to throw at me, what argument was coming.” Her coping strategy was to make herself small. “I was too scared to express myself; I was bare minimum words.”
When she was in her early teens, she escaped. A night or two at a friend’s house gave her room to breathe, “and once I’d figured out I could do that, I kept sneaking out, I kept not returning from school, and I’d be gone for weeks at a time.” Often she slept rough, perched on top of play equipment in a freezing, empty park. It was dangerous – “I was so scared” – but home was frightening, too.
At 15, she fell in love. They moved in together, and Kate became pregnant. But he hurt her. It began with pushing, then slapping, then “grabbing me by the hair, holding my throat, punching me to the wall, tripping me over”.
Studies suggest that girls who grow up in violent homes are more likely to become victims of domestic violence themselves. That was true for Kate, who felt deep down that the physical abuse was wrong “but everything else, the emotional abuse and the sexual abuse, I thought that was just normalised”, she remembers. It was the way things were during her childhood. “I thought they were allowed to take what they want.”
One night, when Kate had been pushed to the ground, her one-year-old son wandered out of his room, upset. Her ex took an angry step towards him, so she climbed to her feet, scooped up her boy, and fled.
Children who grow up in a violent home are deeply damaged by it in ways that can affect the course of entire lives. The deaths of three children this week, allegedly at the hands of their father in Sydney’s Lalor Park, underscores how dangerous family violence can be for the most vulnerable members of a household.
But across the country, countless children are living in violent homes. One in four Australian women say they have experienced intimate partner violence, and many of them have children who watched it happen. One study, which asked adults about their experiences as children, found almost half were younger than four when the abuse began. Some had no idea it wasn’t normal. Others were weighed down by the burden of the secret.
They have struggled with low self-esteem, not feeling safe and lacking trust in others. “I never told anyone about it because it was shameful,” said one respondent. “I didn’t want to embarrass my mum, our family, and my dad even though he was the main aggressor.”
The oft-used description of children’s experience of violence is as a witness. “I object to that word, witnessing,” says Anne Hollonds, Australia’s National Children’s Commissioner. “It misunderstands and diminishes the impact.” Even if they never bear a bruise, children who experience violence are steeped in fear and confusion. They can be co-opted into the abuse themselves, as unwitting weapons in aggressions towards their mum. And their bond with their safe parent can suffer too, as her battle to cope with the abuse and fear leaves little time and patience for them.
“If a child experiences violence of any kind in their home, that has a profound effect on their development and wellbeing,” says Hollonds. “For example, they can struggle to form relationships. If you look at later life harms – such as criminal justice system involvement, mental health issues – domestic and family violence is in the childhood background. If we’re serious about ending adult violence against women, then we have to get serious about violence experienced in childhood.”
At a domestic violence shelter in Sydney’s west, the rooms are cramped and bare. A narrow single bed and set of bunks are squeezed in one room, with a small plastic set of drawers and a shabby desk. It’s ready for the mum and two kids who will sleep there tonight, and maybe for weeks or months to come. Perhaps they’re on their way from the police station. Perhaps they’re still at the hospital, where their mum is being treated for her wounds. Perhaps they are on a bus, their hearts in their mouths, hoping he hasn’t followed them.
Six families will be housed together on this single floor at the shelter tonight, sharing one toilet. Already there is a mother with a newborn baby in one room, who has just left hospital (pregnancy and birth are danger zones for violence). Securing a room is a lucky break for a family on what may otherwise be the worst day of their lives. The fleeing mothers who missed out on the room will instead be sent to a hotel, often in a rough part of town, and often shared with people who may be transitioning out of prison, or suffering mental health issues.
When the families arrive at the shelter, they have little if any money. Most of their toys, clothes and books have been left behind. The children find themselves in a cramped building with strangers who are also traumatised. Their dad might be in custody. They don’t know if they’ll ever go back to their old school, sleep in their old bed, or see their old friends.
The person to whom most children would turn for comfort as their worlds implode, their mother, has little capacity to give them the emotional support they need. “The mothers are often black and blue,” says one of the women who runs the shelter. “She’s ended up in hospital. Police have been involved. Mum has found the courage to leave this relationship, but that’s not the end of the story. It’s the beginning of the story. It’s a new chapter of pain and difficulty.
“Mums are doing the very best they can to survive and navigate those experiences, but if you’re in that kind of headspace, you’re probably not the most present or available mum that you could be if you were living in a safe home.”
For a long time, it was assumed that if services could look after the mother, she’d take care of the children. Increasingly, it’s acknowledged that children need support and counselling in their own right, particularly as our understanding of coercive control grows and we realise how often children are co-opted into abuse, which leaves them confused and ashamed, damages their relationship with their safe parent, and increases their chances of becoming victims or abusers themselves.
In abusive homes, for example, cuddles can be a battleground. Alice*, a mother of five, told a researcher that her ex regarded her affection towards the children as both a threat, and an opportunity to inflict damage. “Your rights as a mother to protect your children were taken away from you,” she said. “You’re not allowed to cuddle them whenever you want because then you’re going against him, like you’re ganging up on him.” Some men ban breastfeeding, too, to fracture the maternal bond and punish the mother.
Nicole Yade, the chief executive of the Women’s and Girls’ Emergency Centre, sees it often. “There was one particular woman we worked with, who said the father in the family told the kids they weren’t allowed to hug their mum,” she says. “Kids are experiencing coercive control in the full breadth of the definition; emotional abuse, financial abuse, they’re experiencing neglect. Sadly, it doesn’t only rupture trust with the perpetrator; it ruptures trust with their mums.”
Rowan Baxter, who killed his family in Brisbane, refused to let the children do planned activities such as going out for breakfast if he was angry with their mother.
Criminologist Silke Meyer from Griffith University has spoken to mothers about the devastating impact of domestic violence on their children, and the ways in which their children were co-opted into the abuse.
One said her former husband would hit her in front of their four children. “The extreme is he would use a telephone, and he would tie me up and then bash me while my boys were standing there, to the extent where the boys would do the same; while he tied me up he said you have got to go hit your mother and things like that.” Another said her ex encouraged their boys to call her names.
“We’ve interviewed mothers saying the perpetrator will line up the children and threaten them so they join in the abuse of mum, and children complying with that because otherwise they know they are going to be the target of physical abuse,” says Meyer.
Coercive control doesn’t only rupture a child’s trust with the perpetrator; it ruptures trust with their other parent.Credit: Louise Kennerley
Another mother said her husband only abused her in front of the babies, so his elder daughters didn’t know. “He doesn’t want them to see him as a bad person,” she said. “He wants me to be the bad person.”
Mothers spoke about the heartbreak of watching their sons adopt the behaviour of their fathers, both towards them and towards their sisters. One said her teen boy had no respect for her. “He talks to me like I’m a dog, all the time,” said one. Another noticed her son become violent towards his siblings. “He hits them for no apparent reason,” she says. “So what’s he going to be like in a relationship if something doesn’t go right? Because that’s what he’s lived with.”
Fleeing the relationship does not stop this. Even violent fathers often get custody and use the opportunity to turn the children against their mother. “He’s so much like his dad and, of course, when he came back from his visit it was like having his father in the room, the things he would say. He was just shooting his father’s bullets for him.” This, says Meyer, undermines the child’s relationship with their safe parent, leaving them unable to trust anybody.
Yet Meyer says recognising the impact of their behaviour on their children can also inspire men to seek help. “Not all abusive fathers intentionally weaponise their children, and many don’t recognise or may deny the impact on children,” she says. “It seems easier for men who use DFV to recognise and acknowledge the impact of their behaviour on children than a partner or ex partner. I think partly because it’s easier for men to victim blame the adult victim-survivors as opposed to the children.”
NSW is trialling a state and federally funded program in which counselling is provided for children who are accompanying their mothers to refuges. It’s play-based therapy, but allows children to process complex and confusing feelings with an adult they can trust. “Sometimes they haven’t done that with mum,” says Yade, whose organisation, WAGEC, is part of the pilot. “Even the littlest people know that it’s upsetting for mum.”
The program treats children as victims of family violence in their own right, and recognises that their thoughts and experiences are different from their mothers’. They might be struggling with the burden of protecting their younger siblings, or with the confusing feeling of loving dad even though he hurts mum, or with guilt that they didn’t protect their mother.
NSW is piloting a program that treats children as victims in their own right and offers counselling.Credit: Louise Kennerley
“The kids we work with often express feeling scared and unsafe,” says Yade. “That often leaks into other relationships they have. If you’re a little person and you start to get the message that people who are supposed to love you the most, and protect and care for you, are actually the most abusive, neglectful people in your life, then that has consequences for how you’re able to build other relationships – with your friends at school, with your teachers.
“Often as a community we know how to evacuate women and children from domestic violence, but evacuation isn’t enough; we also need to help people heal from these experiences. It’s not easy, it may take a long time, but it’s worth doing.”
Yet in a chronically under-funded sector, there are scarce resources for children or young people. Teens like Kate, who flee violent homes, make up a significant proportion of the young people living on the streets. YFoundations is a youth homelessness service, but often finds itself dealing with family violence issues, too. “DFV services are not designed for our children and young people, which means they have nowhere to go,” says chief executive Trish Connolly.
She cites the example of a 15-year-old who had a one-year-old baby and a violent partner. She was too young for domestic and family shelters for adult women, and wasn’t suitable for a youth homelessness refuge because of the baby. She had to go to a hotel. “A hotel is not an appropriate place for a child and her baby who are traumatised,” says Connolly.
Connolly also wants gender to be removed from the conversation about children and young people experiencing DV. “We have young women, young men and non-binary children and young people who are also fleeing DFV and seek our services and support,” she said. “However, the only mention of males in the DFV National Plan is them being a perpetrator and the only offering is early intervention approaches to prevent them from being one. This again is another massive gap in the national plan and public discourse.”
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Kate broke the cycle when she fled with her boy. She did a TAFE certificate, got a job, and secured local housing. She advocates for women in the regions who are fleeing violence. “I have a stable job, I have a beautiful baby boy – he’s just thriving,” she says. “I’m very happy that I’ve been able to take such a crap story and turn it into something that can motivate people.”
*Names have been changed for legal reasons.
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