CHILDREN as young as nine yesterday told of their terrifying experiences growing up in homes where their mothers were physically abused by their partners on a daily basis.
Their graphic accounts of witnessing constant violence were given at a joint conference in Glasgow, where four charities came together to address how living with domestic abuse affects young people.
''When my mum and dad split up, he moved in just a couple of weeks after,'' said a 10-year-old girl of her mother's new partner. ''Just after that, he started beating up my mum. I used to hear it. He was always shouting and mum was crying. It was scary, I kept telling my mum to get away, but she kept giving him a second chance.
''We left in the end, but we had to go when he was at work so he wouldn't know. We went to a Women's Aid house - me, my mum, and my brother, who's 15.''
Her brother said: ''It started when I was about 12. Things were not great at home before that with my mum and dad, but there was no violence. When the new man came, everything changed. He was nice to my mum, but he was never nice to anyone else.
''That changed within a couple of weeks of moving in. As soon as he moved in, we had to give up our house. My mum gave up her job, and we ended up staying in a really rough area because he was from there.
''His head was messed up with drugs so he didn't really know what he was doing himself. If I tried to stand up to him, that made it worse, because then I got in trouble with my mum. There was nothing much I could do because he usually did it when I was out.''
The boy, saying he and his sister now felt safe, explained what led to their eventual escape: ''He kidnapped us, took me and my mum away and threatened to kill us, but the police got him. He's out on petition now from the High Court for setting fire to my mum's sister's house. He thought my mum was in there and he said he wanted to smoke her out.''
The conference was organised by Scottish Women's Aid, NCH Action for Children Scotland, the Glasgow Women's Support Project, and Zero Tolerance. A joint statement from the charities said: ''Research conducted by NCH Action for Children has shown the devastating effects which domestic violence can have on children.
''It found that nearly three-quarters of mothers said their children had witnessed violent incidents and two-thirds had seen beatings. Around 10% of the women had been sexually abused in front of their children.''
During the day-long conference, a nine-year-old boy read a statement which said: ''Some children have to leave their homes because the dad is hitting the mum or child. It is wrong this happens. Children should grow up happy, I think men should be jailed for hitting women or children. Real men don't hit women or children.''
Claire Houghton, national children's rights and support worker at Scottish Women's Aid, said one study found that a third of children tried to intervene in attacks on their mothers.
Another girl of 10 told of her first-hand experiences, saying: ''My mum and dad kept arguing and my dad got put in prison for trying to break my mum's arm. Me and my brother were trying to stop it, but my dad would just keep swearing at us.
''We had to leave then because my mum kept getting hurt all the time and she kept crying all over the place. My brother tried to phone the police, but my dad hid the phone away and he wouldn't let my mum take my little brother, who's two, out of the house. When we left, me and my brother were much better because we didn't have to listen to all the arguments.''
A third girl aged 10, told of a similar experience: ''My mum met her boyfriend and he seemed OK at first but then they started arguing all the time. Then he started getting really violent and he did things like throwing soup all over my mum. He tried to take my mum away and we managed to phone my dad, but he took out the phone and hid it in the car. He tried to make out it was my mum's fault, but it wasn't.''
That girl eventually moved to a Women's Aid refuge and all the children who had witnessed violence said the refuges gave them their only chance of escaping the violence. ''I feel safe now because he can't find us,'' said one.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article