Earlier, someone mentioned a paradigm shift. I feel that a paradigm shift is also necessary in understanding the reality of children living in a situation of domestic violence. It must be understood that those children are not just witnesses of domestic violence or exposed to it, they are victims of it. They are its victims even when they are not actually in the house or the room where the acts of violence, the criminal acts, are being committed, because they are exposed to controlling and coercive conduct on a daily basis. Unfortunately, those children are living in a tense and terrifying climate and they are walking on eggshells day after day. They are not affected simply by being exposed to violence or criminal acts. Being exposed to a climate of tension and terror on a daily basis has an impact in the short, medium and long term on those children and on the ability of the victimized parents to meet the needs of their children.
