Little Witnesses

Rita Daly
TORONTO STAR STAFF REPORTER

DICK LOEK/TORONTO STAR

FAMILY MATTERS: Faith Malcolm walks her sons Meshak, 7, and Merlea, 9, home from school

AS A TODDLER, Merlea Malcolm used to listen quietly from his room to his parents' constant fighting.

He heard the yelling, screaming, banging and, finally, his mother's continuing sobs as she slipped into his bed at night.

Sometimes, he and his younger brother, Meshak, would run crying into their parents' room in a futile attempt to stop the noise.

And once, when things got broken, he heard the police bang on the door and saw them take his father away.

But those frightening years are in the past for Merlea, 9, and 7-year-old Meshak, both of whom have been through a special program for children exposed to domestic violence.

``I like to keep harsh things to myself,'' says Merlea, his brown eyes darting to and fro in the living room of his mother's Toronto apartment.

The research is still new, but a growing body of evidence suggests children who witness violence in their homes stand a good chance of developing emotional, psychological and behavioural problems.

For many of these kids, the symptoms are strikingly similar to those of direct victims of abuse or children who experience the trauma of war.

``Kids who grow up with violence have highly tuned radar detectors where they are always looking for danger or raised voices,'' says psychologist Peter Jaffe, a respected authority on domestic violence and director of the Family Court Clinic in London, Ont.

``What happens when dad buys an extra case of beer? What happens when people start to fight over money? It's like living in the Middle East. You don't ever really relax.''

In the past five years, 500,000 Canadian children and adolescents have been witnesses to domestic violence, according to a recent survey by Statistics Canada. Perhaps more startling, a study by Canadian researcher Peter Lehmann, who now works out of the University of Texas in Arlington, suggests that more than one-half of these young people suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder.

It is now believed that some children in the school system diagnosed with attention-deficit disorder and hyperactivity and placed on the drug Ritalin are actually kids with unresolved trauma as a result of their family environment.

And while it generally has been thought that infants aren't affected by domestic violence, another study out of Texas points to potentially irreversible abnormalities in a child's brain development during the first two years of life.

Says Jaffe: ``We often look for the quick fix when, in fact, there may be deeper problems. People don't want to ask about the violence.''

Last summer, a string of family tragedies in southern Ontario thrust the issue of domestic violence into the spotlight and unleashed an outpouring of public sympathy. In at least two cases, children were involved.

Bohumila Luft was stabbed to death and her four children, age 7 years to 2* months, were shot to death by their father, who then killed himself in their Kitchener home.

And in Pickering, a naked Gillian Hadley fled her home and handed her baby to a neighbour for safety, before being dragged back into the house and shot dead by her estranged husband.

Along with the usual calls for more women's shelters and tougher restraining orders for abusers throughout the summer, there suddenly seemed a greater understanding that this was not just a women's issue but also a children's issue.

The Ontario government responded by allocating $5 million annually for early-intervention programs for children who witness domestic violence.

``Finally, they're putting some money behind us,'' says Kerrin Churchill, a social worker who oversees one of only a handful of programs in the province.

>By comparison, every community in British Columbia offers a domestic-violence program for children.

In one Toronto program, children as young as 4 attend age-specific groups in which, for the first time, they have an opportunity to talk about the violence. It's never easy. In every child's case, the mother is asked to give her son or daughter permission to speak because, through some unspoken pact, they have learned to keep the family secret.

At one recent Wednesday evening session, a small group of 7- to 9-year-old kids filed into a kindergarten classroom for their ninth of 12 weekly meetings. They began by reviewing the cycle of violence. First comes ``honeymoon'' and then ``tension'' and then . . . .

``Oh, I know, I know. Explosion,'' an eager 8-year-old boy offered with hand raised.

Then, it's back to the honeymoon phase ``where the parents are nice to each other again.''

The trick is learning how to stay safe during the explosive stage.

The eager 8-year-old, extremely sharp but restless in his chair, said he flees to the stairs when his parents start fighting in the kitchen.

A 7-year-old girl said she escapes downstairs ``because I don't want to get hurt.''

Another girl shyly admitted she retreats to her bedroom, closes the door and watches TV.

The children were praised for getting out of the line of fire, then were given a safety plan that includes keeping a list of phone numbers of people they trusted to call.

The final lesson before leaving that night: It was not okay for their father to hit their mother because the dishes weren't washed.

This notion, Jaffe found in one of his studies, comes as a surprise to some kids. He discovered that one in four children, at the start of these sessions, believed it is okay for a man to hit a woman if the house is messy. After the program, however, none believed it.

The children referred to this program - called End Violence Alliance or EVA and run by Aisling Discoveries Child and Family Centre - have all shown signs and symptoms of emotional or behavioural problems. Some are withdrawn, most are aggressive or can't concentrate at school.

Their mothers, all battered women who fled abusive partners, attend similar sessions down the hall.

``All the children have witnessed beatings or their father throwing tables around, punching holes in the walls,'' says Marian Crockford, one of the group leaders.

``Some (of the mothers) have been threatened with weapons; some have been slashed,''

Crockford recalls one 9-year-old girl, who had witnessed beatings of her mother, arriving at each session perfectly dressed in a frilly party dress, black patent shoes and a purse.

``It was interesting, as she started to talk more and more about what was happening in her family, she began to relax. She started by leaving her purse at home. Then one day, she came dressed in track pants and a sweatshirt.''

Children can be exposed to domestic violence in a variety of ways. They see it in the living room, hear it from their beds. Sometimes, they are used as pawns or threats, or they witness the aftermath - overturned furniture, broken glass, black eyes.

But how each child is affected depends on a multitude of factors, including the severity of the violence and its duration, the age and personality of the child and the social environment.

Researchers know that not every child who witnesses violence develops serious problems.

Indeed, only 12 per cent of boys whose fathers were batterers choose the same path in adulthood. Nonetheless, social workers and psychologists have found some clear patterns in studying child witnesses.

For instance, young children tend to think the domestic violence is normal, whereas 7- to 10-year-olds think it only happens in their homes and must be kept secret.

The older ones, in their teens, are often more shut down. They harbour guilt feelings and are more difficult to diagnose and treat.

Untreated, teenage girls can become depressed, withdrawn and open to self-destructive eating disorders, psychosomatic problems or drug and alcohol abuse. Adolescent boys can become aggressive, abuse their girlfriends and drop out of school.

Not surprisingly, many of these child witnesses continue to have difficulties well into their adult years.

Studies dating back to the 1980s show unequivocally that a male child who witnessed the physical abuse of his mother is at 10 times higher risk of becoming a batterer as an adult.

A girl who witnessed her mother's abuse is at greater risk of suffering from depression.

Dan Bajorek, who manages the anger-management program for abusers at the Family Services Association of Toronto, always begins by asking which men witnessed violence at home as children.

``Literally,'' Bajorek says, ``whenever I do that exercise, 70 per cent say they did. It's the one out of four men who will say, `My home was peachy-keen, no arguments.'

``For most of them, though, that was their life. Conflict was not resolved amicably. Something got thrown around, someone was threatening. There was always a feeling of intimidation or danger.''

Many of these men, Bajorek adds, didn't seek care and nurturing from their dads, who were seen as intimidators. And the intimidation stopped only when the boys reached their teenage years and they, in turn, became the aggressor.

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