<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A violence that directly challenges child protection<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n For a long time, gender-based violence was understood socially and institutionally from a perspective focused almost exclusively on women as the primary victims, relegating the children living in those contexts to a secondary role. However, in recent years, a reality that compels us to broaden this perspective has gained visibility: violence perpetrated against children and adolescents as a way to harm, control, or punish their mothers. This specific form of violence is called vicarious violence, and its recognition has brought about a profound change both in the understanding of the phenomenon and in intervention models. <\/p>\n\n\n\n To speak of vicarious violence is to speak of one of the cruelest expressions of gender-based violence, because it instrumentalizes childhood as a means to inflict harm. In these cases, children are not collateral witnesses or indirect victims of the violence, but rather deliberate targets within a strategy of control and emotional destruction. The aggressor uses what the mother loves most\u2014her sons and daughters\u2014as a mechanism to exert power, cause suffering, or maintain dominance even after the relationship ends. <\/p>\n\n\n\n This understanding represents a substantial transformation: it compels us to stop considering children as mere bystanders to violence and instead recognize them as direct victims. And this recognition is not only conceptual but profoundly practical, because it changes how we prevent, protect, and intervene. For those of us who work with children, vicarious violence directly challenges the protection system, questioning our institutional responses and reminding us that protecting children also involves understanding the complex ways in which violence can be perpetrated against them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When sons and daughters are used as instruments of harm<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Vicarious violence is not limited to the most extreme cases that make headlines, such as when a father murders his children to harm the mother, although these cases have helped to bring the phenomenon to light. It can take many forms, many of them less visible, but equally destructive. It can manifest itself through threats involving the children, emotional manipulation, intentional neglect of childcare, using visitation rights to inflict suffering, interference in parental relationships, legal manipulation, or behaviors aimed at undermining the children's well-being to punish the mother. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the difficulties in identifying this violence is precisely that it doesn't always appear in explicit or easily recognizable forms. It often infiltrates complex relational dynamics where harm to children occurs as part of an ongoing strategy of domination. This demands a particularly keen professional eye, capable of detecting that certain behaviors are not simply a response to parental conflicts or co-parenting difficulties, but rather to forms of violence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In these contexts, children can become trapped in impossible loyalties, become messengers of conflict, assume roles inappropriate for their age, or be exposed to manipulations that profoundly erode their emotional development. Vicarious violence shatters the idea of childhood as a protected space and turns children into battlegrounds where violence is waged. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Childhood as a direct victim: invisible and profound consequences<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the major advances in understanding this reality has been recognizing that exposure to gender-based violence is itself a form of child victimization. But in vicarious violence, this impact takes on an even more intense dimension because the harm is not only witnessed but also inflicted. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The consequences can be profound and multifaceted, ranging from traumatic impact to attachment difficulties, emotional disturbances, anxiety, depressive symptoms, behavioral problems, guilt, hypervigilance, and disruptions in the development of identity and basic security. Often, these are wounds that are not always immediately or visibly expressed, but which can profoundly shape the life paths of children and adolescents. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One of the most complex aspects is that this harm doesn't occur only in specific incidents, but can become ingrained as a relational experience. When those who should be providing protection become a source of threat or manipulation, fundamental bases of emotional development are fractured. And repairing these fractures requires much more than distancing oneself from the aggressor; it demands sustained processes of support, healing, and rebuilding a sense of security. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Especially in childhood, when development depends heavily on secure attachments, this impact can affect self-esteem, emotional regulation, future relationships, and perception of the world as a safe or threatening place. In adolescence, more complex manifestations can also appear, such as risky behaviors, relationship difficulties, or the reproduction of violent patterns. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Understanding these consequences is essential to avoid reducing vicarious violence to a purely legal or criminal matter. It is also a matter of childhood trauma. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Vicarious violence and protection systems: pending challenges<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Recognizing the existence of this violence also compels us to critically examine how protection systems respond. Because although there have been regulatory advances and greater awareness, significant challenges remain in detection, risk assessment, and intervention. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One of these challenges involves overcoming adult-centric perspectives that still sometimes analyze these situations as a conflict between parents rather than from the standpoint of child protection. When risks are minimized by labeling them as "family conflict" or when the impact on children is ignored, there is a risk of leaving profoundly harmful situations unaddressed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Vicarious violence requires that social services, the judicial system, specialized resources, child protection, mental health services, and educational institutions understand these realities through shared frameworks of protection. It is not enough to address violence against women if children are not explicitly included as subjects of protection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Here, inter-institutional coordination becomes fundamental. Because often the indicators appear fragmented: signs in schools, symptoms in mental health, partial accounts in social intervention, incidents in judicial settings. Only a coordinated approach allows us to understand the full risk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It also involves questioning practices that have historically led to a lack of protection, especially those that, in the name of neutrality or co-parenting, have ignored contexts of violence. Incorporating the perspective of vicarious violence means putting the child's safety and best interests at the center. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The protective role of intervention professionals<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Those who work with children play an essential role in the early detection, protection, and redress of these forms of violence. Often, it is educators, social workers, psychologists, or teachers who are the first to identify signs that might go unnoticed in other contexts. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Sudden behavioral changes, intense fear of visitors, clearly induced speech, hypervigilance, somatization, disproportionate guilt, rejection based on fear, or emotional deterioration associated with certain family dynamics may be indicators that require specialized interpretation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But beyond detection, intervention plays a profoundly restorative role. Because protecting is not just about containing the harm, but about supporting processes of emotional reconstruction. This involves creating safe spaces, validating experiences, working through trauma, strengthening protective bonds, and helping to reframe what has been lived. <\/p>\n\n\n\n In many cases, a trauma-sensitive and rights-based intervention can become a corrective experience in the face of the harm suffered. This is especially relevant in childhood, where restorative relational experiences have enormous transformative potential. <\/p>\n\n\n\n From this perspective, intervening in cases of vicarious violence is not just about addressing a problem; it is about supporting processes of reparation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Prevention is also protection<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Although vicarious violence is often discussed reactively, after the harm has already been done, it is essential to also consider prevention. And prevention involves much more than simply identifying extreme risks. <\/p>\n\n\n\n It involves working on professional awareness, strengthening risk assessment mechanisms, improving institutional coordination, reviewing judicial responses, and ensuring that the best interests of the child truly prevail in decisions affecting children exposed to violence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n But it also involves social education. It means questioning narratives that continue to minimize gender-based violence, dismantling ideas that artificially separate violence against women from harm to children, and promoting a social understanding where childhood is recognized as a subject of full protection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Prevention also involves listening to children and adolescents. For too long, their voices have been secondary in proceedings where they were directly affected. Progress in protection also requires acknowledging their experiences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Naming the violence to make the victims visible<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n Naming vicarious violence is not merely a matter of terminology. Naming it has made visible a reality that for a long time remained partially hidden. And naming it matters because what is named can be recognized, prevented, and addressed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For years, many children were rendered invisible, categorized as witnesses to violence. Today we know they were victims. This change is significant. It means shifting our focus from the margins to the center of protection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And this recognition has profound ethical implications. Because it compels us to acknowledge that protecting women who are victims of gender-based violence also inextricably involves protecting their children. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These are not parallel damages. <\/p>\n\n\n\n These are not secondary consequences. <\/p>\n\n\n\n They are victims. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Protecting children also means combating vicarious violence<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n To speak of vicarious violence is to speak of a violence that simultaneously attacks women and children, breaking bonds, exploiting affection, and leaving deep scars of suffering. But it is also to speak of a reality that we now understand better and to which protection systems have a responsibility to respond. <\/p>\n\n\n\n For those of us who work in intervention with minors, this phenomenon reminds us of something essential: protecting childhood cannot be limited to acting when the damage is already irreversible, but requires detecting, preventing, repairing and building responses where children are fully recognized as subjects of rights. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Vicarious violence confronts us with the limits of our responses, but also with the possibility of strengthening them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Because protecting children involves not only taking care of their present, but also preventing violence from shaping their future. <\/p>\n\n\n\n And in that commitment, combating vicarious violence is also an essential task of child protection. <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n\n\n\n Would you like to study these and other current topics related to childhood and adolescent development? Learn about the Postgraduate in Intervention with Minors<\/a> and work on what you really like! <\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A violence that directly challenges child protection. For a long time, gender-based violence was understood socially and institutionally from a perspective focused almost exclusively on women as the primary victims, relegating the children living in those contexts to a secondary role. Without\u2026 Read more<\/a><\/p>","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":46503,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[222],"tags":[356,839,601,842,802,501,242,840,838],"class_list":["post-46502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-noticias-eim-menores","tag-derechos-de-la-infancia","tag-infancia-y-violencia","tag-intervencion-social","tag-mediacion-y-proteccion","tag-proteccion-infantil","tag-trauma-infantil","tag-violencia-de-genero","tag-violencia-familiar","tag-violencia-vicaria"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/eimediacion.edu.es\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/eimediacion.edu.es\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/eimediacion.edu.es\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eimediacion.edu.es\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eimediacion.edu.es\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46502"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/eimediacion.edu.es\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46502\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46505,"href":"https:\/\/eimediacion.edu.es\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46502\/revisions\/46505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eimediacion.edu.es\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/eimediacion.edu.es\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eimediacion.edu.es\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/eimediacion.edu.es\/eng\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}