5 Forms of Domestic Violence and being witness to them as a child

Growing up in a house, witnessing domestic violence (or being a victim of domestic violence in a lot of cases) is not something anything a child should have to endure. However, for many children this is a sad reality of their young innocent life including myself when I was younger and into my adult years.

Today I am 42 years old, and I have spent my entire childhood witnessing and enduring my parents’ toxic relationship. This toxic relationship included 5 forms of domestic violence abuse. My father the “perpetrator” and my mother the “victim” and us children the in-between.

Types of Domestic Violence Abuse (missionaustralia.com.au)

• Physical abuse – Often the most visible form of DFV, physical abuse can involve direct assaults on the body, including use of weapons, driving dangerously, destruction of property, abusing pets in front of family members and forced sleep deprivation. Physical abuse rarely occurs in isolation and perpetrators can also inflict other types of abuse on victims.
• Sexual Abuse – While sexual abuse can involve strangers. majority of sexual abuse victims know their perpetrators. Sexual abuse in a relationship involves any form of sexual activity without consent, but it can also involve inflicting pain during sex, assaulting the genitals, coercive sex without protection against pregnancy or sexually transmitted disease, or using sexually degrading insults.
• Emotional abuse – Emotional manipulation through bullying or controlling behaviour is toxic and damaging to someone’s self-esteem and self-worth. Victims often are blamed for problems in the relationship, negatively compared with others, or bullied. Emotionally abusive behaviour can undermine someone’s self-esteem and self-worth.
• Verbal abuse – Words can cause as much damage to a person as physical abuse. Verbal abuse includes humiliating taunts either privately or publicly, verbal ‘put downs’ about person’s intelligence, sexuality, body image or value as a family member, parent, or spouse.
• Financial Abuse – Taking complete control of all finances, restricting another person’s access to bank accounts or using their money without consent is considered financial abuse. It involves controlling behaviour intended to make victims feel vulnerable, isolated, and trapped in their situation.

These are the 5 main types of domestic violence abuse I witnessed as child and into my adult years. However, even though as a child I witnessed this behavior and the effects of it in our home and knew it was wrong, it would be a very long time before I understood exactly what domestic violence was and how it would affect my life growing into adult hood.

My intent with this blog and the articles I write are to hopefully help as many people who have either been or are in a position where they are experiencing domestic and understand that if you do have children it is not just you who is experiencing domestic violence (as the victim) it is your children as well which to this day I feel my parents have never understood that, and that it is/was just about them.

And if you are like me a grown adult child of parents who are still in a toxic relationship, I want you to know this is not how it should be for you as an adult in a relationship, we need to break the generational curses/cycles and stop the stigma that remaining in a domestic violence relationship is the easiest way, then leaving.

I hope any adult who is in a domestic violence relationship realizes they are worthy of so much more and have the power to leave their situation and reclaim their life not only for themselves but also for their children.

With love

A Child with a Voice