The shame of being attacked by your child, is a
shocking new kind of domestic abuse - Mothers who've been punched and
abused by their kids tell their stories
Mothers who have suffered the domestic abuse of being beaten,
attacked and bullied by their own children have come out to tell their
stories.
Child-to-parent abuse (CPA) is more common than most people think because it is highly under reported.
In the UK alone, police figures revealed a 30 per cent rise in domestic
violence offences by sons on their parents since 2010, to 5,294 last
year, while of violence from daughters has doubled to 1,598.
There have also been increased reports of teenagers attacking their parents during the Coronavirus imposed lockdown.
According to stories published by pegsupport.com and adoption uk.org,
a lot of parentsdon't report cases of violence perpetrated by their
children because of fear of losing their child or the shame it brings
within their family or community.
Read some stories below (Names have been changed to protect the families).
1. Cowering in her bedroom all night, Caroline Straw’s heart pounded.
She knew the chest of drawers barricading her door offered scant
protection from the potential killer in her home, who had threatened to
suffocate and poison her.
Caroline’s terror was complicated by a conflicting urge to love and
protect, because her attacker wasn’t a hardened criminal, nor a violent
husband, but her 15-year-old daughter, Daisy.
A teenager who enjoyed baking and art and whose middle-class
upbringing seemed to offer stability, Daisy had nonetheless waged a
two-year campaign of abuse against her mother.
‘She’s a loving girl, but it’s as if she has a switch. I’ve had black
eyes, cuts and bruises all over my body,’ says Caroline, 37.
‘It was horrific and heartbreaking.’
‘If I were being abused by my partner it would have been different.
Child-to-parent violence is horrific, but it’s not spoken about,’ she
says.
‘I feel I’m betraying my daughter’s trust by talking about it now.’
Daisy’s behaviour changed when she was 13 according to her mum.
‘She started pushing boundaries, swearing,’ says Caroline, who split
up with Daisy’s father when she was four and has an eight-year-old son
from a subsequent relationship.
Daisy started hitting and headbutting Caroline when she wasn’t allowed out or to use her phone.
At 14, Daisy started using knives and saucepans to attack her mother.
‘She threw whatever she could get her hands on. Sometimes she’d scream
that she hated me. I was constantly on high alert.’
If friends and family asked how she acquired her cuts and bruises, she told the truth.
‘I didn’t want to minimise what had happened. They didn’t know what to say or how to help,’ she says.
Daisy, nearly 6ft, used her height to intimidate her 5ft 3in mother,
and started attacking her six-year-old brother: ‘She’d pin him down and
punch him, or wake him up in the middle of the night and say she was
going to kill him.’ In terror, Caroline moved her son into the bedroom
she shares with her partner.
At a meeting with social services last July, Daisy calmly revealed
she had researched how to kill her mother ‘in seconds’ using suffocation
and cleaning products. ‘She said it would be “fun”.
"To hear her say she wanted to kill me and know she meant it was chilling,’ says Caroline.
‘She was too high-risk to be taken into care,’ says Caroline, who
barricaded herself in her bedroom. ‘I didn’t leave my room — I wasn’t
prepared to play Russian Roulette with my life. I was too panicked to
sleep. I felt sadness, fear and desperation.’
2. Catherine Slater, 32, speaking about her ten-year-old son,
Richard. ‘I love him, but I don’t like him, and that’s a horrible
feeling,’ she says, through tears, explaining how Richard became
aggressive 18 months ago after she and husband Michael, 37, bought him
an Xbox.
‘When we wouldn’t let him finish his game he began throwing things,’
says Catherine, from Staffordshire. ‘When I told him that wasn’t nice,
he’d retort, “What are you going to do about it?”’
Last Christmas, Richard punched her in the face three times. ‘He hit
me with such force I thought my nose was broken,’ says Catherine. ‘There
was blood everywhere. He didn’t apologise — he told me I’d made him
angry.’ She told friends and family the black eye was caused by walking
into a cupboard: ‘Above all, I feel embarrassed.’
The only person who knows the extent of the abuse is dad Michael, who Richard has never attacked.
Catherine insists if she were stricter, it would make Richard angrier
still. ‘I can see the anger in Michael’s face. He’s heartbroken that
someone is essentially abusing his wife.’
"A health supporter has seen him at school and said there’s nothing wrong with him— and to try to ignore it.’
'They say he hits me because he cares about me most,’ says Catherine. ‘But as he grows, I worry he could kill me.’
3. 'People would be shocked if they knew ‘I’m worried about people
judging me, or that I might lose the children.’, says Miranda Rogers,
whose son Tristan, 16, has been violent to her since he was nine.
Miranda lives with her husband in a West Country village. But she
says: ‘I lie in bed at night wondering where I went wrong to have a son
like this. I love him unconditionally, but as he gets older I worry
he’ll break my bones.’
The deputy manager of a nursing home, who quit her job to raise her
five children aged between two and 18, she first noticed second child
Tristan’s behaviour change after her only daughter was born nine years
ago. ‘He started pushing boundaries and saying he hated me.’
When Miranda caught Tristan smacking his five-year-old brother, she intervened and he punched her in the mouth.
‘I took the two youngest children to my bedroom and cried,’ says Miranda,
‘When he calmed down he said sorry and that he “just got angry”. As his mother, of course I forgave him.
Miranda explained the bruise to friends as an ‘accident’ and when
Tristan pushed her into a door frame after an argument aged 11, she
blamed that bruise on playing with her three-year-old.
‘They have to work for their pocket money and tidy their rooms,’ she
says. ‘I’ve taught them there are consequences to their actions. But if I
send Tristan to his room, he’ll smash it up.’
Tristan’s rages increased as he became a teenager
‘He pushes me so hard I’m knocked to the floor,’ says Miranda, who at 5ft 3in is dwarfed by her 6ft son.'
Months ago, after Tristan punched a door, Miranda took him to
A&E, admitting to a nurse that it happened because of his temper:
‘She said I should speak to our GP to help with his anger, but
Tristan cried and begged me not to take him. And I can’t drag him there —
he’s bigger than me.
‘Perhaps because I do most of the childcare, Tristan has never been
violent to his father [a 40-year-old warehouse operator]. My husband
gets angry on my behalf,’ says Miranda. ‘But Tristan also plays us off
against each other, accusing me of winding him up.’
.After he’s been violent he usually apologises, and tells me I must hate him,’ says Miranda.
‘I say, “I don’t hate you, but I hate the way you behave”.’
