Home is so often where the hurt is
INCIDENTS OF CHILD-ON-PARENT ABUSE HAVE DOUBLED RECENTLY
THIS gritty documentary series takes us on to the frontline with police in South Yorkshire, revealing some of the shocking and distressing emergencies they deal with on a daily basis.
This instalment is no less impactful, delving into the complex challenges of policing relationships when parents have come to live in fear of their own children.
And it’s much more common than you might think.
Statistics from across the UK reveal that incidents of child-onparent abuse have doubled in recent years.
Community calls to the police reporting teenagers who are causing trouble are routine, but increasingly these calls are not from outsiders but coming from closer to home.
In Sheffield, on a Saturday night, officers attend an incident where a mother is asking for her 15-year-old son to be taken into custody after he starts causing damage at home.
Then, for the second time in three days, the same officers are despatched after a report of a son attacking his father.
They arrest him under suspicion of threats to kill.
But not all conflicts are to do with children or adolescents. Even parents with grown-up children can find themselves living in fear.
Officers are called to support a distraught mother who’s under siege from her violent and aggressive 23-year-old son, and discover that there’s a complex relationship between parent and child.
And elsewhere, an elderly and seriously ill father has no option but to call for urgent help in the aftermath of the distressing damage caused by his middleaged son, who is living with an alcohol issue.