Domestic Violence Can Be a Huge Problem for Children
When most people think of domestic violence, they don’t think of children, but according to Lynn Koch, the community services coordinator of the Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Center, domestic violence involving children is more common than people think.
According to Lynn Koch, children are not resilient. She goes further to explain that “it’s just that they don’t have any other choice. They have to go to school. They have to stay in the home. They have to continue.”
During a talk with a small crowd of social work employees, Lynn Koch stressed that no matter how hard a person tries to shield children from domestic violence, it will always affect them. Always.
She goes on to say “whatever they are dragging with them, that baggage, it going to come out. The youngest I worked with was a three month old … he never opened his eyes. He never cried. He didn’t wake during a bath. He didn’t wake during a diaper change. He barely woke to eat. That’s how he told me how he was affected by what he had witnessed in his small years of life.”
She says the hard part is that she can’t firmly describe a child who has seen domestic violence; there are merely warning signs, and every child reacts to the domestic violence differently.
In addition to her own experience in helping victims over the years, Koch also uses the experiences of Olga Trujillo to illustrate her point. Olga Trujillo wrote the memoir “The Sum of my Parts,” detailing her own story of domestic violence and abuse.
While in many cases alcohol or drug use is involved, Koch says, domestic violence cannot be explained away by it. “Violence in a relationship is a choice. It’s a sober person that chose to take that drink. It’s a conscious choice to use. It’s a conscious choice to abuse.”
“The waves from domestic violence reverberate throughout a child’s life, and it isn’t until they reach emotional and physical safety that they begin to feel the long-term effects of their abuse.”
Koch says that due to the fact that domestic violence is about control, most victims choose to protect those who they are most afraid of. Many times, victims will choose to stay with their abusers in order to protect their children, and if they do seek help, they always suffer for trying to undermine their abuser’s control.
According to research that Koch has done, less than one-third of all domestic violence calls end up with police reports being filed. One particular town, Marshalltown, had only 100 out of 312 calls that became police reports.
A conclusion Koch came to through her research is that it’s not always safe to leave a domestic violence situation. Rather, children need to be taught the tools to stay safe in the violent environment they’re stuck in. The best way to do that is ensuring them that you believe them, teaching them to listen, supporting the child, and learning to listen ourselves. Domestic violence is an extremely difficult situation to be in, and it’s made many times more difficult when kids are put in the middle as well.
Koch said that “while many batterers, particularly men, statistically are doomed to repeat the cycle of violence they learn at home, there is still hope because abuse is a choice. There is always potential for change.
Education can be the solution to many problems we currently face, domestic violence more than most. As soon as everyone realizes just how serious an issue it is, there will be a lot more solutions put in place to help victims and their loved ones.
