Childhood trauma.

Byline: Karen McCowan The Register-Guard

CORRECTION (ran 9/30/04): Lee Ann Wichmann's name was misspelled in a story on children witnessing domestic violence that ran on Page A1 on Sunday.

Twenty-five years after leaving the Michigan home where her father brutalized her mother, Margie Tessin-Mason is still tormented by conflicting feelings about her dad.

She remembers the man who used to toss her in the air and carry her on his shoulders. "He called me `Pumpkin' and built snow forts and played baseball with me," she said.

But she also remembers the man who regularly pushed, slapped and punched her mother - usually after drinking.

"He would kick her in the head and chest while she was curled up in a ball on the floor," Tessin-Mason said. "I would be riding in the back of his pickup, and he would swerve as he hit her in the front seat. I remember her crying and begging as he pushed her down the stairs. When I was 4, a neighbor found me outside in the dead of winter, crying at the edge of our driveway in my little coat and hat. When she asked why, I said my daddy was hitting my mommy over the head with a pan."

Donald Tessin killed himself in 1997 after his wife finally left him.

Now 41, Tessin-Mason is a nurse, wife and mother with a family of her own. But she still resents the way her father's violence hijacked her childhood - and haunts her life today.

"I really loved my dad, and I miss him," she said. "But there's this other part of me that hopes that before he went to heaven, he had to relive everything he did to my mom."

Tessin-Mason is walking, talking proof that children are damaged by domestic violence between adults.

"Perpetrators and receivers of domestic violence need to realize it's not impacting just their lives," she said. "They are also impacting their children's lives, their grandchildren's lives."

In many cases, those children grow up to repeat the cycle of violence - a fate Tessin-Mason may have avoided only because a gentle husband refused to respond in kind when she lashed out physically.

"Untouched" but traumatized

Each year, an estimated 3 million U.S. children witness domestic violence. The experience is the biggest independent risk factor for future violence against a partner, according to a 20-year study of 534 New York children by researchers at Columbia University.

Controversies rage about how to stop transmitting domestic violence from one generation to the next.

But on one point, everyone agrees: Breaking the cycle begins with accepting that children are traumatized by a violent parent even if they're never beaten themselves. Even if they never witness the battering of their other parent. Even if it occurs before they're old enough to remember it.

"Experts used to believe that children wouldn't be affected if it happened when they were still little tiny," said Elaine Walters, director of the local Kids First Safe Alternatives Center, where children can have supervised visits with a battering parent. "We're finding out it's almost the opposite because early exposure to trauma, chaos and neglect can actually change brain development. Long-term early trauma malforms us."

The greatest damage comes from the repetitive, unpredictable violence of a parent - someone children instinctively expect to protect them.

"Witnessing violence by a stranger is certainly a traumatic experience, but recovery can usually be pretty clean," Walters said. "But if the perpetrator is related to you, if you are emotionally dependent on him, it's much more complicated."

Living with a batterer is like being in a hostage situation, said Lee Ann Wickman, clinical supervisor of the Looking Glass agency's Building Safe Families program for domestic violence survivors and their children. In most serious abuse cases, men are the aggressors, according to widespread statistical and anecdotal evidence.

"Even when the abuse isn't happening, the threat of it is always there," Wickman said.

The child also suffers because the battered parent - consumed with hypervigilance, anxiety and placating the batterer - isn't emotionally available.

Unhealthy bonds and roles

In older children, the damage may show up as an in-home version of Stockholm Syndrome - a psychological phenomenon that causes captives to identify with their captors.

"Batterers cynically exploit the climate of fear they have created and the child's longing for relief from it," write researchers Lundy Bancroft and Jay Silverman in their book, "The Batterer as Parent." The result is a strong but unhealthy bond, they have found: "The child becomes focused on the needs, demands and emotional state of the adult."

Children of batterers also tend to carry a heavy load of guilt, Wickman said.

"They feel responsible," she said. "A batterer may come home, see toys out on the floor, and go into a `Why can't you keep these kids under control?' rage. The child thinks, `If I could stop doing this, Mom wouldn't get hurt.' It's also that kids, naturally, developmentally, feel responsible for everything that happens."

Such feelings dogged Tessin-Mason at age 14. Though still too young for a driver's license, she drove her injured mother to the emergency room after her father slammed her into a kitchen cabinet.

"I always felt like I should have been able to make her leave - or make him stop," said Tessin-Mason, an only child.

Such trauma is linked to a host of problems later in life, including higher rates of depression, attention deficit disorder, and substance and sexual abuse. It also makes children 2 1/2 times more likely to be involved in partner violence as adults, the New York study found.

Tessin-Mason said her husband, Ron Mason, helped her avoid that fate.

"He is a very affectionate, warm person," she said. "But early in our marriage, I still tried to push him to the edge. I would be the one to pick a fight, once I even kind of hit at him. I became in some ways what my father was - I guess I still thought, maybe unconsciously, that this was how marriage was supposed to be."

Instead of striking back, however, her 6-foot-2 husband "just kind of sat on me and helped calm me down," she said. "He said, `You've got to get rid of the rage.' '

She's worked hard to do that, Tessin-Mason said. She credits a visit to a therapist but mainly her husband's demonstration that "every man wasn't going to use his strength to hurt women."

Still, she believes she carries permanent scars from her childhood.

"I don't have a lot of respect for men, in general," she said. "Sometimes I'm kind of standoffish. And I became a nurse because I wanted to know I could make good money and never have to depend on anyone."

Treating parents helps kids

Research indicates that the best way to help such children is to help their battered parents.

"It's absolutely critical for them to get the intervention they need to take their power as an equal human being who can fully parent," Walters said. "Too often we stop with the healing of the physical injury, when mom is still trying to crawl out from under the residual social, mental and financial trauma."

Battered parents may need help regaining their child's trust and respect - often deliberately sabotaged by the batterer, Wickman said.

"He will undermine her parenting by saying things like, `She doesn't know anything!' or `You don't have to listen to her!' ' she said.

At the same time, children exposed to violence need direct help overcoming their own physiological, emotional and developmental fallout. Walters is leading a group of professionals interested in establishing a local trauma healing center to do that.

"When people get the support and attention they need to resolve trauma, they get out of re-enacting it," she said. "I believe people can completely heal with thoughtful, comprehensive care."

Restoring a child's relationship with the battering parent also can help them recover, according to a growing number of experts.

"Men who are renouncing their violence can break the cycle of abuse and be powerful vehicles for secondary prevention," said Juan Carlos Arean, a Harvard University violence prevention specialist and director of the Boston-based Fathering After Violence Project.

At a Eugene workshop this summer, Arean praised the ground-breaking approach of a local group, Christians Addressing Family Abuse, on that front.

But the work is controversial because of the batterer's potential to further harm his children or their mother. That's a very real possibility even if the physical violence stops, according to authors Bancroft and Silverman.

Children are hurt not just by a batterer's violence, they write, but by his entire manner: "self-centeredness, control and entitlement, and undermining of the mother."

Even if a man has addressed all those issues, many advocates for battered women remain wary of a batterer's reinvolvement with the family he terrorized.

"They say, `Yes, he's a changed man, but maybe he needs to practice those changes with a new family because of the damage he's done to this one,' ' Arean said.

But he offered one compelling reason for working with batterers and their children.

"We know that, legally or illegally, most batterers continue to have contact with their children," he said. Given that fact, he said, it's better to intervene.

Community can help

Community members also have a role in preventing future domestic violence, say experts and survivors.

Studies of adults who grew up in violent homes showed a common trait among many who avoided partner violence themselves. As children, they had another caring adult who served as a mentor or provided a safe haven.

"Having someplace to go where they don't feel alone and frightened - even if it's for a small percentage of their day - can make a huge difference," Walters said.

It's important that such adults allow children to express their feelings about what's going on without fear of judgment, Wickman said, "whether they say, `I hate my dad!' or `I miss my dad, and I'm mad at my mom for making him go away.' '

School programs are also key. "Another way people learn battering behavior is from their peers - one child can influence several other vulnerable kids, so anti-bullying programs are important," she said.

And, after years of speaking to local middle and high schools as an abuse prevention educator, Walters has seen progress in students' understanding of the underpinnings of domestic violence.

"Kids have the language now to talk about what is and isn't abuse, what is and isn't acceptable in relationships," she said. "They talk about controlling or threatening behavior."

Simply talking more openly about the problem is a big step, said Debbie Parker of Eugene. She left her ex-husband 20 years ago after he put a shotgun beneath her chin, then fired it into the ceiling of their trailer just inches from her face, she said.

At the time, battering was still regarded as a "just between them" issue - to the point that no one intervened when her husband kicked her in front of customers while she waited tables or when he hit her hard enough to knock her out at a bar, she said.

"Now, we're not so complacent, we have things like the Silent Witness traveling display," she said of the life-size cutouts that represent dead victims of domestic violence.

Talking to kids

Now happily remarried, Parker makes a point of speaking out when she sees evidence of dangerous relationships. When working at the Churchill High School library, she would ask girls about black eyes and alert the school nurse practitioner.

"Another time, I heard a student complaining that her boyfriend was intercepting her cell phone messages," Parker recalled. "I said, `You know what? That's a red flag,' and told her where controlling behavior can lead."

Parker also has gone out of her way "from Day 1" to make sure her 15-year-old son is never violent or controlling.

"I told him what happened to me when he was small, 3 or 4 years old," she said. "When he was in second grade, I was volunteering at recess when I saw him pulling on a girl's dress even though she was saying, `Stop.' I went to him and said, `When someone says stop, you need to stop.' '

Tessin-Mason has taken a similarly direct approach with her daughters, Kelly, 15, and Niki, 12.

"She told us what Grandpa used to do when he drank," Niki said. "How he wouldn't let our Grandma have a job because he wanted her to be at home."

But Tessin-Mason also has given her girls some concrete guidelines, Kelly said.

"She's told us that if you start to get in a relationship and the guy gets really, really controlling, you should tell somebody, get help and get out."

Karen McCowan can be reached at 338-2422 or kmccowan @guardnet.com.

HOW TO HELP

Recognize domestic violence for what it is: a crime - two crimes if done in the presence of children.

Support community efforts to ensure that battered women get counseling and assistance, and that batterers face consequences and get treatment.

Provide a place of refuge if you know a child living in a violent home. Say: "I'm sorry this is happening. It isn't your fault. You can come talk to me any time."

Work to reduce cultural acceptance of violence.

Support domestic violence prevention education: Teach students how to build healthy relationships.

HEALING CONDITIONS

Things that help children recover from domestic violence

trauma:

Strong bond to battered parent

Help in regaining respect for battered parent

Freedom from feeling responsible for taking care of adults

Continued contact with the battering parent in a physically and emotionally safe setting

Strong sibling bond

Parental support for child's therapy

- Elaine Walters, Kids First Safe Alternatives Center; Lee Ann Wickman, Looking Glass Building Safe Families program; Juan Carlos Arean, Fathering After Violence Project; Carolyn Rexius, Christians Addressing Family Abuse

CAPTION(S):

A violent father left Margie Tessin-Mason with a legacy she's determined not to pass on to daughters Kelly (left), 15, and Niki, 12. Tessin-Mason fondly recalls her father's warm side, but darker memories still burn.