Last updated 05:19, Friday, 09 May 2008

ONCE was the time when domestic violence was accepted as a hidden crime. Not entirely condoned perhaps but tolerated as a matter solely between man and wife, partners in private conflict.

Mercifully those days are gone. Abuse in the home is regarded now as a wholly unacceptable blight on family and social life, a severe risk to life and safety, one of the principal sources of destructive emotional scarring.

Nowhere is evidence for the need for that revised thinking more convincing than in the outpourings of children who have witnessed the ugliness of hostility at home.

Postcards designed by Cumbrian youngsters have illustrated that truth. They have given harrowing insights into how domestic violence affects children.

In Cumbria 30 per cent of domestic violence cases start when the woman is pregnant; 23 per cent of people suffering domestic injury have had to be treated in casualty departments; home violence has more repeat victims than any other crime and 90 per cent of abuse is carried out with children in the same room.

All individuals need and have a right to expect safety from harm in their homes.

Children most especially require solid foundations of domestic stability and love if they are to grow into confident adults with aspirations for happy, rewarding lives.

Cumbrian police, health and family support professionals hope to work more closely together to reduce incidents, deal with them effectively when they arise and give the most beneficial help to victims and their children.

That ambition is a laudable further step in directions already showing encouraging results. But it will amount to very little if, more generally, sufferers of domestic violence continue to choose silent acceptance.

To tolerate abuse as an unfortunate byproduct of a volatile relationship between two troubled adults is to condemn generations of children to a perpetuation of fear and an espousement of violence and unhappiness as life’s norm.