How Domestically Abusive Men Distort Their Children's Thinking
And how children can break free of the distortions
Dr Emma Katz is widely regarded as the world’s foremost academic expert in her area of study — how coercive control impacts on children and young people.
Emma specializes in the harms caused by father-perpetrated coercive control, as well as children’s and mothers’ resistance and recovery. Read more in her book Coercive Control in Mothers’ and Children’s Lives, published by Oxford University Press.
Welcome
Thank you as always for your support for Decoding Coercive Control with Dr Emma Katz.
In this post, I will deep-dive into a key type of abuse that domestically abusive fathers inflict on female victims-survivors: trapping their children in distorted ways of thinking that minimize or deny the reality of his abusive behavior.
What this post offers you
This post looks at the distorted ways of thinking created by perpetrators and the harms they cause. It focuses in particular on the ways in which children react when a perpetrator attempts to distort their ways of thinking.
From a professional angle, the post also examines how people and systems currently leave children vulnerable to the distorted ways of thinking created by the perpetrator — and how professionals can instead begin to enable children to break free from those ways of thinking.
Finally, using real-life stories drawn from my research, the post considers how children developing a clearer-eyed understanding of what the perpetrator was really like, and breaking free from the perpetrator’s distorted ways of thinking, can help to enhance their mental health, confidence, and general well-being.
INTRODUCTION: Understanding the problem.
The importance of their child’s well-being and safety to victim-survivor mothers is massively under-recognised by our societies.
In newspapers, TV and magazine features, we often see media “success stories” about how these mothers have left perpetrators and are living new lives.
Yes, media support for these victims-survivors is good — but these success stories are often problematic when you look more closely.
Why are the usual “success stories” problematic?
The usual “success stories” are problematic because the situation for victims’-survivors’ children is often not considered. Most only give a brief mention (at best) to the children the victim-survivor still shares with the perpetrator.
Yet these children’s well-being and safety is not a footnote: It is vitally important to victim-survivor mothers. Simplistic success stories that ignore children’s well-being and safety are not true success stories at all.
To begin with, let’s list 3 key problems with the “success stories” that ignore children’s well-being and safety.
3 key problems with the “success stories”
Here are 3 key problems with the usual “success stories” that appear in the media.
A supposed “success story” is not a real success story where:
the victim-survivor is still sharing a minor child with the abuser and the child is still being emotionally, physically and/or sexually abused by the abuser (often via contact that may well be family court ordered and that the adult victim-survivor and child have no real power to stop).
[Emotional abuse of a child in this context can include perpetrators trying to keep children stuck in distorted ways of thinking. For example, a perpetrator might falsely and repeatedly suggest to the children that their mother is to blame for all the child’s bad experiences. The perpetrator’s false picture of reality will paint the mother as untrustworthy, selfish, un-fun and incapable. It gives children the message that the mother deserves angry and resentful treatment from them.]
It also tends to be falsely presented as a success if:
the victim-survivor mother has won any period of time where she doesn’t have to send her child into dangerous direct, unsupervised contact with the abuser … even if that period of time is brief and temporary.
[Of course, if the respite from such contact is likely to be brief and temporary, it’s not going to feel like much of a success for the mother. The mother is likely to be acutely aware that, soon, the brief period will be over and she’ll have to battle both her abuser and the system once more for her child’s safety.]
Stories are also presented as successes even when:
the victim-survivor has had their wealth, financial security or ability to make money stolen/drained away/injured by the abuser/court systems, fundamentally damaging their ability to financially support their children as well as themselves.
The lack of attention to these issues is a continual problem in the media. If the victim-survivor has physically escaped, that is definitely a great achievement. However, the problem comes when that is presented as bringing a clear end to the abuse. For so many victims/survivors, that is not the reality. So, ignoring the issues above glosses over the victim-survivor’s ongoing lived experience of struggle and harm.
And what about mothers whose children are grown-up?
Another ignored group of victim-survivor mothers in this respect are those who share grown-up children with their abusive ex-partners.
The issues around these adult children’s well-being and safety should be emphasized too, but this rarely if ever happens.
Just because a child turns 18, does that mean the abuser automatically stops using the child as part of post-separation abuse?
No — emphatically not. The abuser’s use of the child to hurt their ex-partner may be lifelong, and the harms this causes may be lifelong too.
So, who is telling the stories of survivors who left 15+ years ago and now have children in their 20s and beyond who the perpetrator parent is still using to continue their post-separation abuse?
Sadly, they normally do not appear. Pretty much no one is telling these stories to the public.
The incomplete picture of recoveries
As we can see then, there is much relating to children that is being ignored in media representations of victims’-survivors’ recoveries. Because of this, there are false “success stories” where harms have not really stopped and justice is still denied.
Yet we – societies, systems, services and communities – should be standing with and supporting mothers and children, and holding perpetrators accountable, until the harms have really been stopped and justice has really prevailed.
Unfortunately, the reporting we encounter in magazines, newspapers and TV usually vastly oversimplifies what it takes to really be safe and free from an abuser.
It isn’t good enough.
It’s certainly not the way that stories of escaping from domestic abuse should be told.
How possible is it, really, for the victim-survivor to get to a place in life that’s fair and just and promotes their well being?
The full complexity of this challenge, and what obstructs it, needs to be acknowledged.
We – societies, systems, services and communities – should be standing with and supporting these mothers and children, and holding perpetrators accountable, until the harms have really been stopped and justice has really prevailed.
If we fail to tell the full truth of these situations, we let societies off the hook. We let the status quo continue. And perpetrators continue to get away with their crimes.