This piece from the Orlando Sentinel on 4th October, reporting on responses to parent abuse following the death of Rosemary Pate at the hands of her son, has popped up a number of times in the last week, cross-posted in different places. It was good to see the topic of parent abuse getting a good airing after an earlier item appeared in the same paper in a couple of months ago (see my post of 24th August); and encouraging to see a call for early intervention to prevent abuse before it reaches this stage. Continue reading
Tag Archives: domestic violence
Addressing parent abuse through Juvenile Family Courts in USA
Filed under news reports, publications
Adolescent Violence to Parents Conference report
The Adolescent Violence to Parents (APV) conference held this week (September 23rd 2013) in Oxford was an important landmark in terms of knowledge and understanding, as the findings of the three year ESRC-funded research led by Rachel Condry and Caroline Miles were presented to a packed audience of over 130 people.
This represented the first large scale analysis of police data on APV in the UK, looking at all cases reported to the Metropolitan Police, and defined as constituting a criminal offence, between April 2009 and March 2010 (n=1892). The research looked at victim, offender and incident characteristics and then considered how adolescent violence to parents should be understood and addressed within the field of criminology in the future. Continue reading
Filed under conference report, publications
Silent Cries: a child’s account of living with violence
Amongst the many factors that have been identified with regard to children’s violence to parents, the experience of living with domestic violence has been found to have significant prominence. Yet the way this influences children’s behaviour is itself multi-layered and will vary from family to family.
The normalising of violence, anger and disdain for the parent who failed to protect themself or the children, “stepping up to the plate” once the abusive adult is no longer in the household – these are the links commonly cited, but we hear less of the child who fights back at the time in attempts to protect one parent from the other. A book, which I was sent this week, opens up this aspect of parent abuse, in what the Yorkshire Post described as “an intensely moving account” of domestic violence through the eyes of a child. Continue reading
Filed under Book review
A Police Response to Parent Abuse
When I undertook my Masters study in 2004 – 6, one of the people I interviewed was a police officer, who described his sense of frustration at the difficulties in responding to incidents where parent abuse could be clearly identified. Pretty much everything I had read online or in the literature had suggested that the police hadn’t a clue, sided with the young person, maybe arrested the parent and certainly had nothing useful to offer; so it was interesting to sit down with someone and hear the other side. He identified a system of adhoc responses depending on the awareness of the individual officer, and then nothing concrete to offer, nowhere to refer on to as there was no agency taking responsibility for meeting the needs of families where children’s violence to parents was an issue. Continue reading
Filed under Discussion
The law of unintended consequences
Today see the roll out of the welfare benefits cap across England, Wales and Scotland. What we are supposed to expect is that this will encourage families to find work or move to a different, cheaper area to live. Sadly, what we may see is a rise in violence and family break up. The Enemy Within, the 2012 report from the charity 4Children, using data from a specially commissioned YouGov Family Violence survey, highlights redundancy, long-term unemployment and serious financial worries as the major contributory factor in family violence. The dual pronged budgetary cuts to benefits and funding of services are thus especially worrying. Continue reading
Filed under Discussion, news reports
No rules about controlling relationships
Coverage of an assault by Charles Saatchi on his wife Nigella Lawson, outside a London restaurant at the weekend, has sparked considerable debate in the press and on social media – not least as to why people felt it was OK to photograph and document events, rather than intervene.
Writing in the Telegraph, Iris McCann and Dr. Petra Boynton have used the opportunity to discuss the different faces of domestic abuse, and to offer advice to those who recognise their experience. Continue reading
Filed under Discussion, news reports
Teens see violence as normal
Eddie Gallagher has drawn my attention to an article in www.dailylife.com.au, commenting on an apparent rise in domestic violence crimes in New South Wales involving juveniles as the aggressor. (A 6.5% increase between 2008 and 2012 in the 10 -17 age group) This increase comes at a time when overall figures from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research show a decline in juvenile crime in every other area, and has sparked concerns that teens now see aggression as a normal part of life. Continue reading
Filed under news reports, Training opportunities
HOLES IN THE WALL 