Scarica Witnessed Violence: Definition, Recognition, Consequences, and Prevalence in Italy e più Appunti in PDF di Psicoterapia solo su Docsity! What is witnessed violence? The area from which attention has developed witnessed violence is from anti-violence centers, privileged observers of this phenomenon. In 1999 was created an ad hoc commission: Italian Coordination of Services against Child Maltreatment and Abuse (CISMAI). With the CISMAI, the topic of witnessed violence has found ample space. And in 1999 this commission made a definition of witnessed violence: “Violence witnessed by minors in the family environment means the experience by the child of any form of maltreatment, carried out through acts of physical, verbal, psychological, sexual, and economic violence, against reference figures or other figures affectively significant adults and minors. This includes violence perpetrated by minors on other minors and / or other family members, and neglect and mistreatment of pets. The child can experience these acts directly (when they occur in his perceptive field), indirectly (when the minor is aware of them), and / or perceiving their effects”. And until the early 2000s, witnessed violence was undervalued. How to recognize it? Not leaving physical and easily visible signs, witnessed violence is difficult to recognize. But children feel different emotions like: fear, pain, confusion, helplessness, anguish, anger BUT also guilt, invisibility, hyper-vigilance, frozen emotions, dissociation. And the most common signs in children are: • A deteriorated and compromised competence in social relations • Adultized behaviors • Very low self-esteem • Emotional inhibition • Inhibition of aggression What are the consequences of it? • post traumatic stress disorder • emotional-relational difficulties • cognitive and behavioral difficulties • various forms of long-term maladaptation • violent social behavior (bullying, delinquency) • intergenerational transmission of violence • they learn contempt for women and for people seen as weak • dysfunctional internalization of gender models • they identify emotional relationships as relationships of suppression ‘ How widespread is it in Italy? A confirmation of how very recent this issue is in Italy comes from the fact that at the moment statistical data relating to violence witnessed on minors are completely absent. But it is possible to obtain them from the knowledge by the surveys on gender-based violence. In particular, Istat published in 2015 the data concerning the women's safety survey "Violence against women inside and outside the family". According to the survey, 6.788.000 or 31.5% of women between the ages of 16 and 70 have suffered some form of physical or sexual violence in their lives. The survey then focuses on the possible presence of children in the event of violence suffered by the mother: children who witness the violence of the father against the mother are more likely to be perpetrators of violence and the daughters to be victims. For this reason, the increase in the number of domestic violence to which children have been exposed is very worrying: the share rose to 65,2% compared to 60,2% in 2006. In particular, they rarely witnessed violence in 16,2% of cases of violence, sometimes in 26,7%, often in 22,2%. Furthermore, in 25% of cases, children were also involved in violence, in particular 10,8% were rarely a victim, 8,3% sometimes and 4,5% often. Witnessed violence in 2015 represents the 2nd most widespread form of child maltreatment in our country, 19.4% out of 100,000 - 1 out of 5. Case example of witnessed violence The case concerns a family with two young parents and two children, a boy and a girl, under the age of ten. Their relationship lasted more than ten years, until it was interrupted by the woman, who decided to leave the house with the children, after yet another violence. She asks her husband for separation and avoids all contact with him, preventing him from meeting her children for almost a year. Despite this, the violence does not cease: the ex-husband, feeling violated in his right as a father, insists on wanting to see his children. And wrote to the woman messages in which he threatened to kill the lady and the children, he was denounced by the same. And for this reason, the judicial authorities prepared a ban on approaching the ex-wife and her children. But to safeguard the interests of the children and their right to have a father, the lady decides to retire the complaint and ask to the Family Counseling Center to organize protected father-child meetings, without her meeting the father. The Family Counseling Center first, meets the family to understand and evaluate their history, through individual interviews with parents and a mother-child interview. Both parents are convinced of each other's parental incapacity. The father is incapable of self-determination, does not understand his actions, considering them non-violent and minimizing them.
