Statistics

Domestic Violence

Children who witness violence at home display emotional and behavioral disturbances as diverse as withdrawal, low self-esteem, nightmares, and aggression against peers, family members and property. (Peled, Inat, Jaffe, Peter G. & Edleson, Jeffrey L. (Eds.) Ending the Cycle of Violence: Community Responses to Children of Battered Women. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications, 1995.)
Over 3 million children are at risk of exposure to parental violence each year. (Carlson, B.E. "Children's Observations of Interparental Violence" in Edwards, A.R. (ed.). Battered Women and Their Families. New York: Springer. pp. 147-167. 1984).
In a national survey of over 6,000 American families, 50% of the men who frequently assaulted their wives also frequently abused their children. (Straus, M.A. & Gelles, R.J. (eds.). Physical violence in American families. New Brunswick, NJ, Transaction Publishers. 1990.)
In 1995, the FBI reported that 27% of all violent crime involves family on family violence, 48% involved acquaintances with the violence often occurring in the home (National Incident-Based Reporting System, Uniform Crime Reporting Program, 1999).
Straus and Gelles (1996) have estimated that over 29 million children commit an act of violence against a sibling each year. (Straus, M. & Gelles, R. 1998. How violent are American families: estimates from the national family violence survey and other studies. In: Family Abuse and Its Consequences: New Directions in Research (G. Hotaling et al., Eds))
Studies show that child abuse occurs in 30-60% of family violence cases that involve families with children. ("The overlap between child maltreatment and woman battering." J.L. Edleson, Violence Against Women, February, 1999.)