{"id":3562,"date":"2026-04-27T17:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T17:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hiddenscars.org.au\/2025\/?p=3562"},"modified":"2026-04-27T17:36:26","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T17:36:26","slug":"abusive-mothers-the-unspoken-side-of-domestic-violence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hiddenscars.org.au\/2025\/abusive-mothers-the-unspoken-side-of-domestic-violence\/","title":{"rendered":"Abusive Mothers: The Unspoken Side of Domestic Violence"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Domestic and Family Violence (DFV) is an endemic scourge in our society. It should be widely known that men are the main perpetrators and women and children are the main victims. It\u2019s bad, it\u2019s terrible, it\u2019s demonic. It happens in churches too, even in ministry families. In Australia, on average, one woman a week is killed by her partner. It is evil!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But if there is one side to DFV that people don\u2019t like to talk about, even DFV advocates seem very reluctant to bring this up. That is, women as perpetrators of violence against their own children.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a child and teenager, family life was dysfunctional and spasmodically abusive.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My stepfather could be physically abusive, he was a gambling addict, it turned him into a right bastard. But my mother was by far the worst. She was a real Jekyll and Hyde character. She could be the kindest and most affectionate mother a boy could have. However, she was also an angry drunk. She could be physically abusive, emotionally abusive, and a real nasty piece of work. She would do anything to hurt you, slap you in the face, sleep deprivation, or launch a torrent of verbal attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It pains me to say it, but my most vivid memory of my mother was in one of her drunken fits of fury, her face contorted with rage, and screaming in the shrillest voice I\u2019ve heard, \u201cI hate you!\u201d Then there was the time, almost comical as I think about it now, that I took a knife to her cask wine, and she chased me around the house, armed with a rolling pin, stumbling mostly, and yelling all sorts of nonsensical profanities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019s an old Afghan proverb, the axe never remembers the tree, but the tree always remembers the axe. We remember the pain of people who hurt us, we store it in our bodies, as it is said, \u201cthe body keeps the score.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This abuse had a deep and detrimental effect upon me. For the first twenty years of my life I was convinced that most women hated me or were at least coldly indifferent to me. When I joined the army, this gynophobia was translated into a form of misogyny where women were somewhere between damsels to be protected and objects of sexual conquest. When I joined the church, I gravitated towards a very strict form religious conservatism on gender roles which was only undone by marrying a wonderful woman, raising two fantastic daughters, and realizing that white middle-class suburban life combined with 1970s sitcom patriarchy was not the lens through which to read Holy Scripture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every child must wrestle with the fact that his or her parents are fallible. I\u2019ve had to accept that much of mother\u2019s personality and behaviour is because she herself was a victim of abuse and trauma. I try to remember her best and not her worst. And then, in the fullness of time, learn to forgive her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I know it is not popular, I know it doesn\u2019t fit the narrative, I know it is the exception and not the majority of the problem in relation DFV. But can we please at least acknowledge women as perpetrators of DFV, especially against children, in the various ad campaigns and on the professional development circuit?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Domestic and Family Violence (DFV) is an endemic scourge in our society. It should be widely known that men are the main perpetrators and women and children are the main victims. It\u2019s bad, it\u2019s terrible, it\u2019s demonic. It happens in churches too, even in ministry families. In Australia, on average, one woman a week is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3563,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hiddenscars.org.au\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hiddenscars.org.au\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hiddenscars.org.au\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hiddenscars.org.au\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hiddenscars.org.au\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3562"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/hiddenscars.org.au\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3564,"href":"https:\/\/hiddenscars.org.au\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3562\/revisions\/3564"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hiddenscars.org.au\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hiddenscars.org.au\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hiddenscars.org.au\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hiddenscars.org.au\/2025\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}