Death by Love

All children from families of domestic violence have a strong desire to have the violence stop. When it does not stop, children often experience shame, guilt, fear, loyalty conflicts, anger and dvepression and anxiety.

  • The rate of child abuse is from 6 to 15 times higher in families where the mother is abused than in families where the mother is not abused.
     

  • Of women coming to shelters, more than half report that their children are also physically, emotionally and, sometimes, sexually abused.
     
  • Many battered women report that their abusers threaten or attack their children as a way to control and hurt the mothers even more.
     
  • Studies of abused children reveal that almost half of them have mothers who are also abused, making wife abuse the single strongest identifiable risk factor for child abuse.