The most vulnerable and sometimes unseen victims of Intimate Partner Violence (IPV)/Coercive Control (CC) are the children. Their safety and importance in custody cases must become a priority in their defenseless states, and judges and evaluators must begin to act “in the best interest of the child”. This does not necessarily that we listen to what they want since they, too, are IPV/CC victims. Children are little survivors and often assume roles that align with IPV/CC perpetrators. As such, their stated words may intend to please the perpetrator or protect themselves, or their mother, from violence with which they are familiar.
Children may assume various presentations along a spectrum. They may align themselves with the abusive parent as a survival mechanism. This may look like the behavior of children is “out of control” with the IPV/CC parent. This sometimes happens when the perpetrator has no rules in their home and children rebel once they return to the home with appropriate structure. An alternative explanation is that children feel “safe” with their protective parent to express their anger, rage, or fear towards the perpetrator in his absence. Some children show IPV/CC through behavior while others make unusual statements unprompted, such as “Daddy said…” The IPV/CC perpetrator understands that derogatory statements to a child about their mother will be repeated to her. Their statements are calculated and intentional to engage the child in IPV/CC incidents.
The stories of children often change based on coersion, rewards, or threats, and can be considered unreliable. Children alter their portrayal of events to deny what they experienced or witnessed to avoid “daddy going to jail because of you” or “mommy got hit because of you”. It is classical conditioning, rewards versus punishment based on behavior, where an automatic behavior is paired with an outcome. Children change their stories if they become tired or wary of adults asking repetitive questions. They just want the questions to stop, they do not have the answer, or they already answered that question but were asked again. Children of IPV/CC assume blame without being told they are at fault for the family’s problems due to their immature and egocentric nature. Since their world view naturally revolves around them, young children assume problems are their fault.
Children “witness” IPV/CC in a variety of ways, the least of which occurs with seeing furniture in disarray in the home while also hearing their mother crying. Children overhear arguments, name-calling, “thumps” followed by their mother’s cries, or hearing items break or smash around the home. While the protective or “at-risk parent” may make every effort to keep their children from any exposure to assaultive or violent events, they are likely unsuccessful through no fault of their own. When children observe an actual event, it is an intentional and manipulative act by the perpetrator of IPV/CC. Children’s observations extend IPV/CC to them by the perpetrator, forcing them to experience similar traumatic fear as their at-risk parent. When this happens, the message to children is, “You could be next.”
Prior to a child being a direct victim of IPV/CC, a perpetrator controls children with their size, tone of voice, simple gestures, or outward threats or coersion. Children typically see their parent as “large” simply due to their size differences. As such, an angry perpetrator standing over them becomes an intimidating threat. Since 90% of children have witnessed a perpetrator’s IPV/CC in some form towards their protective parent, they know what may happen to them if they displease the abuser. If you think about tone and volume of voice separately and imagine a perpetrator’s loud or deep voice yelling, you can imagine the threat perceived by a child.
A look, “a dark face” or “black eyes”, or a gesture may be known to children as a warning or a sign of danger, and a lower tone of voice or even periods of “the silent treatment” suggests something worse is coming. The finger across the throat gesture is quite commonly associated with “shut up or else”, including the threat of being killed. The side glance or narrowed eyes say, “What did I tell you to say or not to say?” These gestures commonly occur quickly or out of the view of adults in the room, or are recognizable only by the children.
Much research and literature cites that 58,500 children per year are placed with the perpetrator of IPV/CC by family courts. In some research, 24-55% of documented divorce cases included IPV/CC with 50-73% involving confirmed child abuse. Other research shows between these placements occur despite reports to local child protective agencies of physical or sexual abuse that are often “unfounded”. This means an investigation took place and “investigators” did not find sufficient evidence that abuse had occurred. Even if medical evidence is available, caseworkers and investigators across the country determine cases are “unfounded” and are then closed. When this information is presented in court by the perpetrator’s attorney, the gender bias is strengthened that the mother lied to “make him look bad” or to “keep him from seeing his children”. Family courts have historically disregarded this important information as part of the pattern of IPV/CC towards a mother and her children. There are always patterns.
If or when custody is shifted to a perptrator of IPV/CC, means of control take so many forms, including a prominent initial step of social isolation. While the mother has likely been isolated during the relationship, isolation of children first may look like the removal from public school to an online learning environment. For school-aged children, social development is critical, but the perpetrator’s demands for isolation prevents children from talking to friends or teachers. Their inability to speak sends the initial message of “I control you” and reinforces their lack of safety in being able to commumicate with other children and, most importantly, their protective teachers. Further, protective adults will be unable to observe changes in the child’s moods, behavior, or identify physical or psychological forms of abuse.
In Part 1, I referenced the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study compiled in 1998 by Dr. Vincent Felliti.** Dr. Nadine Burke Harris had been studying medical issues in her pediatric practice associated with childhood trauma, which intensified after she learned of Dr. Felliti’s work 10 years later. In her TedTalks from 2016, Dr. Nadine Burke Harris talked about the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis that occurs when we see a bear in the woods, allowing us to be prepared to run, freeze, or fight the bear. Poignantly, she says, “But what if the bear comes home every night?” She then tied her early research experiences with tadpoles (yes, frogs) with stunted growth that follows constant “toxic stress” in the home.
When the HPA axis is constantly activated, hormones that manage toxic stress cause serious damage to developing children, including asthma, juvenile diabetes, the infant’s “cold that just won’t go away”, childhood obesity, Grave’s disease, risky sexual behaviors in adolescence, and a whole host of other medical issues. Mental illness in children and adolescents include anxiety, attention problems, distractibility, behavioral acting out problems in school and at home, alcohol and tobacco use, substance use, Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, depression, and suicidality. The development of children is shaped and molded in seriously, sometimes fatal, medical and mental health problems. The toxic stress of exposure to IPV/CC is real, statistically proven, and needs to be introduced to family courts.
Research produced by the National Violent Death Reporting System (Wilson et al., 2023) identified 686 child homicides by a firearm with 86% of them being children as collateral victims of IPV/CC. Of these 686 child homicides, 14% were teens who were killed by a current or former dating partner. Further, child homicides by weapons were likely when IPV/CC was involved that followed conflict, crises, and also occurred with the perpetrator’s suicide. More than half of IPV/CC-related child homicides included 94% IPV-related deaths of the mothers of these children.* Some of these children had not been physically assaulted or abused in any way prior to their deaths.
I will reiterate here that the information provided here is not to incite fear, but to expand awareness of the severity and impact of IPV/CC on children. Although I have included much information here, a wealth of knowledge is available to you as well if you would like to increase your own awareness. My ultimate goal is to increase your safety and the outcome of your case in family court. If the abuse of women is not enough to convince family courts of the reality of IPV/CC, the statistics emerging for children is a necessary added educational component.
***Burke Harris N. The Deepest Well: Healing the Long-Term Effects of Childhood Adversity. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2018.
**Felitti VJ, Anda RF, Nordenberg D, Williamson DF, Spitz AM, Edwards V, Koss MP, Marks JS. Relationship of childhood abuse and household dysfunction to many of the leading causes of death in adults. The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study. Am J Prev Med. 1998 May;14(4):245-58. doi: 10.1016/s0749-3797(98)00017-8. PMID: 9635069.
*Wilson, R. F., Xu, L., Betz, C. J., Sheats, K. J., Blair, J. M., Yue, X., Nguyen, B., & Fowler, K. A. (2023). Firearm Homicides of US Children Precipitated by Intimate Partner Violence: 2003-2020. Pediatrics, 152(6), e2023063004. https://doi.org/10.1542/peds.2023-063004
