by Dr. Ana Nogales, Ph.D.
From the Newspaper La Opinión

It is interesting to observe how many excuses some women make for their husbands when the husbands are aggressive with them, but the most frequent is justification of their violence, saying that they married for life and that they must bear the burdens of marriage and that their children need a father.
They do this so as not to accept that they feel alone, especially in a foreign country. They feel very humiliated by the situation and wish to hide it from public view.
The price of this attitude is to perpetuate physical abuse of not only themselves, but of their children, even if they are not the ones who receive the blows directly. Children who see their dad hit their mom grow up with the erroneous idea of what an adult relationship is like. Some react with terrified fear and others with extreme emotional distancing. The idea of violence can stay with them for life, causing them to become violent themselves, repeating their father’s conduct.
In other cases, they strongly reject violence, becoming very passive or highly resentful.
The most powerful memory of my professional career in communication media is when I worked for the radio station La Voz (The Voice), for about three years. A listener called to vent something that had happened some years back and had been kept secret until then, when he decided to tell it and share it with the audience.

This anonymous caller disclosed the anger he felt toward his father for mistreating his mother. He saw her battered and he took his revenge on animals—dogs or street cats which he tortured or killed while thinking of them as his father. One day he saw that his mother was bleeding from a beating by his father and he decided to kill him and he did kill him. He buried him and knew what had happened, everyone believing that he had finally left them. This listener, now an adult, could not with conscience and sadness watch his mother suffer.
This is an extreme example of what can happen when children witness violence in the home, but it is not unique. In Texas, a legislative study found that 63% of young male homicides had killed another man because he mistreated their mother.
In summary, violence in the home, even when it is not directed at the children, affects them equally. In most cases, these children need psychological help to recover. Fortunately, the State of California has an assistance program called Victims of Crime that covers psychological services free to children who have been mentally affected by their father’s violence. But, as responsible parents, we can prevent the damage by behaving with consideration, respect, and love towards those we most love.