Batterers affect dynamics of entire family.

Byline: The Register-Guard

The effects of domestic violence on children are only recently beginning to be fully understood, says Lundy Bancroft, a counselor and co-author of "The Batterer as Parent." Bancroft argues that the effects batterers have on children go far beyond the trauma of witnessing violence toward a parent. Batterers determine the dynamics of the entire family and the impact is so great, he suggests replacing the term "children exposed to violence" to "children exposed to batterers." Bancroft, also the author of "Why Does He Do That?", spoke from his Massachusetts home:

Question: What's been the impact of your book?

Answer: It's had quite an impact on how professionals think about the impact on children exposed to battering. One of the main things that has been its contribution has been to really take a look at the symptoms that the research is establishing in children who have been exposed to battering and then to say, "Which aspects of their experience are causing them the most distress?" and "Is this about just the fact that they see and hear these horrible fights or is it also about a lot of other stuff?" What I laid out in "The Batterer as Parent" is, it's about a lot of things. There are a lot of really, really distressing aspects of life when you have a batterer in the home besides the fact that he gets violent sometimes.

Question: What was your motivation for writing this book?

Answer: One of my motivations was to get family courts to understand that even if the physical violence stops post-separation, that doesn't mean your concerns about domestic violence are over. The batterer is still a batterer and batterers have certain very well-established characteristics. There are some pretty well-established characteristics about how they parent that really have to be taken seriously. ... So far they're just not being addressed almost at all in how courts make decisions about custody and visitation.

Question: How can one batterer frame the dynamics for an entire family?

Answer: Because he's got so much power and because he's so scary that family members feel like they have to - and in fact they're sort of right- they feel like they have to adjust the way they do things to protect themselves from him. That means that he can really change how everybody is relating to everybody else.

Question: Can you give an example?

Answer: Let's say a boy perceives that his sister is very closely associated with mom and sees that that's really incurring dad's wrath and that dad's really resenting and being mean to the sister because of her affiliation with mom. Then the boy may think "Well, you know what, I better distance myself from my sister or I'm going to be guilty by association." So then you start to have this tension between the boy and the girl because of the fact that they're kind of on different teams with respect to the abuse.

Question: Have you seen any changes in the way the public views this issue? Are we making progress?

Answer: When it comes to children the awareness is really just beginning. People are still largely unaware. They still tend to think if the children are not being abused themselves, then that issue is kind of between the parents. It's just beginning to dawn on people what it would be like to have this kind of stuff going on in the house, even if you weren't the direct target.

Question: You mention in your book the presence of talents, interests and close relationships with trusting adults as some traits shown by the most resilient children exposed to domestic violence. What else helps children survive?

Answer: The No. 1 protective factor appears to be the quality of their relationship with their mom, and some mothers manage through these experiences to really keep their relationships with their children from being damaged. Other times the batterer just manages to drive such wedges and create such huge problems - and that's a very big post-separation concern that courts are not addressing. ... Courts make these custody and visitation determinations in domestic violence cases that end up really damaging children's relationships with their mothers. They have them away from their mother too much, they give the batterer too much opportunity to continue to alienate children from their mothers ... and so forth. We really as a society need to keep our eye on the ball and unless mom is just a terrible parent herself - and it does come up in some cases - our No. 1 goal has got to be to support these children who have a close relationship with their mother.

- Lewis Taylor