violence against parents: family dynamics and keys for the intervention paris, 27th november 2010

Violence against parents:family dynamics and keys for

the intervention

Paris, 27th November 2010

Some facts

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Violence against parents: an emergent phenomenonNumbers (I)

About the increase of judicial complaints:

Autonomous community

Period Increase

Cataluña 2000-2004 X 8

Valencia 2000-2004 X 14

País Vasco 2002-2003 X 3

Alicante 2003-2005 X 3

La Rioja 2005 30% de denuncias por violencia filio-parental

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Violence against parents judicial complaints in Spain(*)

60006200640066006800700072007400760078008000

2005 2006 2007

númerodedenuncias

2005 6.700

2006 7.300

2007 8.000

Increase 16.25%

(*)Source: El Correo (19/05/2008)

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Adolescence Violence against parents:Contextual and personal characteristics

Calvete, E., Orúe, I. y Sampedro, R. (2009). En Prensa

Longitudinal studies. 1.477 adolescent sample

between 12 and 17 years old. 7,2% has attacked their parents

once at least.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Relationship between women attacked and their aggressors

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Servicio de Atención Telefónica para Mujeres Víctimas de Violencia Masculina Doméstica

DEFINITION AND TYPES OF VIOLENCE

AGAINST PARENTS

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

DefinitionPhysical violence (aggressions, pushes, throwing objects) or verbal violence (repetitive insults, menaces) o non verbal violence (aggression menaces, broking appreciate objects), make them repetitive against parents or their tutors.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Violence against parents types

Traditional VAP: problem add to another big one.

New VAP: the VAP as the main problem

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

“Traditional” violence against parents

Autism or serious mental deficiency.

Mental disorders: delirious or hallucinations.

Mental disorders related with

drug-addition.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

“Traditional” violence against parents

Adolescents that defence themselves being victims of abuse.

Violence used as a way of protection.

Retaliation: child abused or abandoned that return the treatment when the roles change.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

“New” Violence (I)

It’s a new intra-family violence model, in one hand related with the “control” and “power” and in the other, with the obtaining of objectives.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

“New” Violence (II)

Children, adolescents and young people, visibly “settled down”, with more or less violence behaviour extended, but often reduce to the family surrounding.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

“New” Violence (III)

Often Drug-taking. But these consumes don’t appear in the “centre” of the problem, “additional” problem or “facilitator” of the violence.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

“New” Violence (IV)

Violence in “scale”: it starts with insults, continues with menaces and breaking objects and finishes with physical aggressions more and more serious.

This process could take years.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

General facts (I)

Prevalence: very different numbers and little credible (from 0,6 to 16 %)

Age: often old parentsSocial level: from every socio-economical

levelGender:

Aggressor: inter-gender similar probabilityAttacked: mothers have more probabilities

SOCIAL CHANGES THAT FAVOURED VIOLENCE

AGAINST PARENTS

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Social changes (I)Educational model change:

From authoritarianism to permissiveness.

From a hierarchic model (authoritarian) to a “democratic” bad understood model.

In family and school.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Social changes (II)

Educative conflicts between parents and teachers

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Social changes (III)

in the number of children.

in the number of hours that parents stay at home: “key children”.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Social changes (IV)

Changes in family models: Nuclear family < 50 %

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Social changes (V)

Changes in the family cycle: delay in the medium age of paternity

↓ “Aged parents”

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Social changes (VI)

More permissive society with aggressive behaviour from children and less from the parents.

in the violent messages in de Media.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Pseudo-independence

These things make that parents authority decreased.

Many children accede to a pseudo-independence: their parents have abdicated in their roles and have to get in charge of their lives without an effective detachment.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Lack of de Legitimacy

Children have more power ,and in some occasion have all the power: despotic children.

However, they have not legitimacy to exercise power: to conserve it, they have to use violence.

Educative styles

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Educative styles (II)

Gallagher (2004) correlates VAP with two educative styles:

Permissive-liberalAuthoritarian violent

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Educative styles (IIIa)

Authoritarian-violent style

More related with traditional VAP

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Educative styles (IIIb)

Multi-violent families

Violence as a conflict resolution method.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Educative styles (IIIc)

Any rebelliousness is punished with increase of the punishment, menaces, humiliations y violence.

Authoritarianism is not negotiable and it is exercise in a rigid and inflexible way.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Educative styles (IIId)

VAP appears as:DefensiveProtectionRetaliation In “mirror”Linked to serious psychopathology

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Educative styles (IVa)

Permissive-liberal style(or punitive non strict)

More related with the New

VAP

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Educative styles (IVb)

Rules not clear.

Children are often over-protected: they receive everything, without counterparts.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Educative styles (IVc)

Generates despotic children.

Low self-esteem.Low level of frustration.Low empathy.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Educative styles (Va)

negligent style

Related with both types of VAP

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Educative styles (Vb)

Parents have abdicated from their role.

Absent of rules.Pseudo-independence and

parentalización of children.VAP as an imposition or to

refuse the role settled.

FAMILY FACTORS THAT FAVOUR THE VIOLENCE

AGAINST PARENTES

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (Ia)

Family experience to solve conflicts using violence.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (Ib)

General violence: everybody against everybody.

Impasse Tension Tension Violence

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (II)

Non normative parents “democratic”, excessively permissive, that love their children whatever they do.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (III)

Over-protective parents because different reasons: very wished child, late, fragile o adopted, well-disposed to satisfy every wish of their children.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (IV)

Parents in-satisfied with their role or verbalizations about their lives are empty.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (Va) Conflictive relationship

between parents.

Mutual des-qualifications

Triangulation

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (Vb) In-consistence and disagree

between parents about the children education.

Arbitrariness in child punishments.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (VII)

Hierarchy problems:

parents that renounce their roles and refuse to establish rules.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (VIII)

Peace and family

harmony myth.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Factors that favour the apparition of the violence against parents (IX)

“Passionate” relationship, “fusional” between one of the parents and the adolescent.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Malfunction Areas

Three areas:

Hierarchical organisation and establishment of rules.

Protection and secret. Separation and fusion.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Family types I

Mono-parental families with parent-child fusional relationship.

Families with deep disagrees between the couple:Triangulation.

Multi-violence families.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Family Types II

Almost in every family appears the fusion with one of the parents, previous to the appearance of the violence, with the other peripheral parent, absent or in-existent.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Process that causes the violence I

Conflict / distance between parents

Introduction of the child in the conflict

Triangulation

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Process that causes the violence II

It doesn’t produces the treachery to the triangulated

child

Fusional relationship with the allied parent

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Process that causes the violence III

Difficulties for separation and autonomy

Conflict between fusional relationship and the wish of

autonomy

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Process that causes the violence IV

Appearance of the violence as desperate solution to move away

Seeing the secondary benefits in the violent behaviour that perpetuate the conflict.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Fusional relationship

Wished for both parts

Need of support, company, comfort

Privileged relationship, intimacy, satisfaction

Till the relationship finish itself

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Violence behaviour bloom IV

The violent episode as a primitive mechanism of

keep away and separation

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Euskarri

Violence Against Parents Intervention Protocol

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Protocol intervention

Complex intervention

The protocol: Favours an well arranged intervention,

that facilitates the necessary contention and setting.

Defines clearly objectives and steps. Maintains a coherent line of intervention.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Therapeutic intervention

Starting always with a family intervention

Later: Interventions with other

subsistems: couple, sibling or another combinations or individual interventions

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Inclusion Criteria

Families with children at any age. Protection or refuge institutions

for child and young people.That practice reiteratively

physical violence behaviour or non verbal violence against parents or tutors.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

Exclusion Criteria

Isolated violenceViolence that happens in less

conscience situations: intoxications, mental disorder of the course or the content of thinking, autism or mental deficiency, that doesn’t repeats when the mental disorder or the intoxication diminishes.

Roberto Pereira. Director EVNTF

OBJETIVES

Stop the violence behaviourPromote changes in the family

process and structure to prevent its reappearance