Following on from the Guardian article at the weekend, there has been coverage across radio and TV regarding the findings of the Oxford University research study into adolescent to parent violence. You can listen to an interview on the BBC Radio 4 PM programme here for the next week (about 50 minutes in). In it ‘Jane’ describes living in fear of her son after a violent assault with a knife, the guilt and shame experienced by parents in her situation, and the help she received from the Rosalie Ryrie Foundation in Wakefield. Her son spent one year living out of the home, but has now returned and with the help she receives she has been able to be more confident in the way she responds to his behaviour, walking away when necessary and establishing good boundaries – feeling safer, though not entirely safe still at this time. Rachel Condry, author of the study, and Joe Lettieri, of PAARS in Enfield, also appeared on the early evening BBC London News television programme, and the interview is to be shown again this evening in the late news programme.
Category Archives: radio and video
That thing …
… When you do or think something and suddenly everyone else is doing the same? Well it’s been that sort of day!
Following the presentation of the key findings and recommendations on Thursday, Professor David Gadd of Manchester University received coverage across a number of radio stations for the From Boys to Men Project, which examined why some young men go on to become perpetrators of domestic abuse, and what can be done to prevent this. The research found strong correlations with past experience of domestic violence in the home, but David Gadd made it clear that this did not amount to causation. The authors of the research call for the development of preventative work in schools, with work on violence and abuse included in sex and relationship education. Continue reading
Filed under news reports, radio and video, Research
Everybody Hurts: Parent abuse on Radio Sheffield
The top story on the Radio Sheffield breakfast programme yesterday morning (October 3rd) was to do with the launch of a support group for parents being abused by their children in the Sheffield area. Toby Foster gave a very sympathetic hearing to “Anne”, who established the group to reach out to parents in the same position as herself. She has a son, now 14, who has been violent towards first his sister and then herself and others since he was 7 years old. He now has a diagnosis of Aspergers, but Anne stressed that violence to parents was not only perpetrated by young people with health issues. Continue reading
Filed under radio and video
BBC draws attention to parent abuse.
Great to hear a six minute piece about parent abuse on the BBC Radio 4 flagship Today programme this morning. (8.22am – 8.28am) Also available from the BBC website here.
Joe Lettieri, from PAARS, was interviewed, and there were 2 clips from interviews with parents. One was a single parent who had experienced escalating abuse from her son (now aged 12) for the last 10 years, and the other a “middle class” mother whose daughter had become physically violent to her only recently, but who had been abusive in other ways prior to this. Both commented that it was the verbal abuse that they found the hardest to take, despite accounts of really quite severe physical injuries. Attention was drawn also to the shame and stigma experienced by parents: “I feel like I’m a rubbish Mum”. Continue reading
Filed under Discussion, radio and video, Research
Keeping Families Safe
The official announcement of the piloting of a new programme to address family violence in the state of Victoria, coinciding with the first Australian National Adolescent Violence in the Home conference, held this week in Melbourne, received significant coverage in the media. I reported on the project in a previous post of 13th February. Continue reading
Filed under news reports, radio and video
Strong links between different kinds of family violence
An interesting juxtaposition of topics on Woman’s Hour today. Amongst the early items, Jenni Murray interviewed Lisa Harker, Head of Strategy at the NSPCC, and Radio 1 presenter, Gemma Cairney, about the shocking frequency of teenage relationship abuse. Gemma’s documentary “Bruising Silence” aired on Radio 1 tonight, and the NSPCC published a report, “Standing on my own two feet” in 2011, described as the first ever study of abusive relationships among teenagers (downloadable from the NSPCC website). Among the findings, from the University of Bristol, were that 25% of teenage girls and 18% of boys had experienced physical violence in a relationship. In a lot of cases, there was a strong association with witnessing violence in the home, or with peers or family members – 20% of girls had seen domestic violence. Continue reading
Filed under Discussion, radio and video
HOLES IN THE WALL 