Supporting children when the system fails

The pilot programme Irina was in was created by Liliana ȘtefănescuGoangă, a lawyer with 20 years’ experience in domestic violence cases, together with three psychotherapists. The lawyer saw how emotionally affected were the children accompanying their mothers to her office to talk about restraining orders. And she had witnessed her father’s violence, so she knew how heartbreaking the stress of dealing with tension at home can be.

Between 2020 and 2022, 23 mothers and 40 children each received a minimum of 10 sessions of psychological support, with funding secured through a crowdfunding facilitated by a local NGO.

Many mothers, survivors of domestic violence, are overwhelmed after leaving abusive relationships. They go through painful divorce trials, live with repressed anger and lack of self

Most of the children the psychotherapist worked with in the project were over 5-6 years old, but had been exposed to violence shortly after birth. She witnessed their hypervigilance: how they keenly observe the moods of the adults around them and adjust their behaviour according to their reactions. They are quiet, wellbehaved children, they even seem submissive and don’t go off the parent’s word.

“Children who grow up in families where there is verbal or physical violence against their mother,” says Anamaria Vid-Pop, a psychologist at Hope and Homes for Children (HHC), “think this is normal.” If mothers don’t react and even excuse perpetrators, telling children that “it’s not daddy’s fault, he was just angry, we’re moving on because he’s daddy and we love him and he loves us,” children end up asking: is love a slap in the face?

And if we shape their thinking that

Especially in vulnerable areas, in villages or even small towns, the state could build such programmes into community mental health centres. At the moment, there are 79 centers (for adults and children) nationwide, located only in towns, far from vulnerable communities and completely unknown publicly. This is insufficient. In these places, says Pop, there should be “psychologists specialising in trauma therapy to help mothers and children going through various situations of violence with psychotherapy and parental counselling.” Living in a society that tells us that young children don’t hear or see or understand, educating parents about the effects of domestic violence on their children is an essential component.

Last year, the General Inspectorate of the Romanian Police counted 68,000 incidents of domestic violence, but we don’t know how many of these were witnessed by