INTRODUCTION

It is natural that when people discuss domestic abuse, the victim is identified as the person (normally the woman) who is the most direct focus of the abusive behaviour. However, this means that children living in homes characterised by domestic abuse can remain excluded from analysis. At most, they are seen as ‘collateral’ or ‘secondary’ victims. Typically, discussions then go on to describe the coping mechanisms that children use, ofter presenting them as more resilient than they are. This is most obvious example of this sidelining of the impact of domestic abuse on children is the 2013 UK Home Office's definition of domestic abuse:

This explicitly excludes children as the victims of domestic abuse.

This chapter will argue that children who live with or witness domestic abuse should be regarded as the direct victims of domestic abuse. It will be one of the key arguments of this chapter that domestic abuse against the carer of a child or in a household where a child is present is per se a form of child abuse by the perpetrator. Domestic abuse aimed at a mother is abuse to the mother – child relationship, something that is central to the child's welfare. This way of understanding the impact on children is particularly important because it means that interventions in relation to children should not focus on ‘protecting the child from the abuse’, but rather on protecting the mother – child relationship.

The chapter will not discuss children who are directly subjected to violence; such cases are unproblematic examples of child abuse. Instead, it will focus on cases where the direct target of the abuse is one person (typically the mother) and it is the child who is witnesses or lives with it. Inevitably this is a blurred line. Indeed, as already indicated, the chapter will to a large extent reject the distinction between direct and indirect victimisation.