International Day of Innocent Children Victims of Aggression

 Barbara L. Bonner, Ph.D., University of Oklahoma  Dr. Bonner’s perspective of children exposed to violence stems from her experience working with children after the Oklahoma City bombing, victims of terrorism and natural disasters, and adolescent sex offenders who had prolonged exposure to domestic violence. She stated that in 1962, a seminal article emerged on child maltreatment , and yet in 2002 we still do not have a standard set of definitions. Definitions, however, “drive the field” and enable researchers to conceptualize the problem, as well as incidence, prevalence, and prevention strategies . Meanwhile, researchers have jumped ahead with treatment interventions without the benefit of adequate definitions. It is also important to accurately understand the complexity of the child’s experience , the child’s perceptions and attributions , and those factors that foster resilience. In terms of children exposed to domestic violence, researchers need to employ standard defin...

 . The lack of common terminology, definitions, and conceptual models has been a major stumbling block to scientific progress in the area of children’s exposure to violence . It is important to sort out the contextual factors that may affect children such as poverty, the family environment, neighborhood violence, and whether these children experience other forms of victimization. It is essential to examine the proximity of the violence, its intensity and frequency, and the relationship between perpetrator and victim . Another issue that deserves examination is how the perpetrator’s resolution to the violence (i.e., whether they accept blame or deny it) impacts the child’s reaction to the violence . Disentangling the problem of co-occurring violence requires that we comprehensively assess the characteristics of violence, children’s exposure to it, and comorbidity. There is a need to better assess the reliability and validity of reporters of violence and abuse, and incorporate inf...

Since multiple perspectives are often involved in defining violence , Dr. Leavitt emphasized that the research community needs to find a reasonably small number of variables that explain a lot of the variance. It is also important to talk to children and to find the best ways to interact with them . Children may be the best informants regarding their own experiences and parents may be unaware of children’s exposure to violence . Parents may not be motivated to report their children’s experiences accurately and may also have different ideas compared to their children about what constitutes violence. When developing scales to measure children’s exposure to violence , researchers should have a conceptual model in mind. The research community needs to address the type of exposure in context , in terms of community, home, school, or media, and then choose instruments that can best measure this. Within that framework, it is essential to look at the proximity of the violence, its intensity ...

 Despite the increasing frequency of publications on children exposed to violence , the literature suffers from a lack of common terminology and definitions. For example, when researchers talk about children exposed to domestic violence , many studies have lumped together children across too large an age range, which may obfuscate some of the effects. There have also been inconsistencies in defining the term “domestic violence,” which has been used interchangeably with such terms as “partner violence,” “marital violence,” and “interpersonal violence.” The problem is in adequately conceptualizing the violence in terms of type of violence (physical, psychological), specific acts, severity, type of perpetrator, frequency and timing .  Another issue is how to best assess how a child exposed to violence perceives it. Current definitions of violence are mostly centered on adult perceptions. Another issue that has not been examined is how the perpetrator’s resolution to the violenc...

 Drawing upon 20 years of experience examining definitional issues in the field of child abuse and neglect research , Dr. Trickett summarized the critical issues for studying children exposed to violence. First, better definitions are needed to facilitate communication in this complex research area. At the same time, better definitions will enable scientific progress through better understanding of the independent variables, as well as the components of treatment that “make the difference.” It is also important to sort out the contextual factors that may affect children such as poverty, the family environment, neighborhood violence, and whether these children experience other forms of victimization. Children in child abuse and neglect studies frequently experience more than one form of abuse, with 90 percent of the subjects in one study experiencing more than one form of abuse and neglect. In addition, community violence may affect rates of child abuse since violent neighborhoods ...