| 3's Thursday Doco: MacIntyre Investigates - Parents Under Attack |
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Justine, Pauline and Jeanette are all loving parents, but each one of them shares a dark and disturbing secret – they have systematically been beaten, attacked and abused by their children. The three women’s experiences are just the tip of the iceberg. Victims of this nature are often too ashamed or terrified to speak out – a taboo which is masking the full scale of this problem. Where most people think of domestic violence in the form of parents hitting children or husbands beating wives, as Donal MacIntyre tells, the often hidden and commonly unknown form of domestic abuse comes in the form of children hitting parents. For the first time, both parents and children speak out about the problem as they tell MacIntyre about their experiences with this subject. They have previously kept their secret hidden at all costs in their struggle to keep their families together. MacIntyre Investigates: Parents Under Attack also features footage from the groundbreaking project set up by the U.K’s Wirral Council to combat parents fears of their own children. This project, titled PEACE (Parents Enjoying A Challenging Environment) is the only one of it’s kind in the whole of Britain. “Many of these parents have lost control of their children,” says Bobbie Crawford, who runs PEACE. “The aim of the course is to identify the issue with them, raise their self esteem and empower them to set objective rules and boundaries.” When asked why these children lash out at their parents, Crawford says a lack of discipline is the answer. “Children need boundaries and consistency and actually feel happier when there are rules that they have to stick to,” he says. The documentary also shows that it is often the children blaming the parent for the loss of another parent when they attack them. In cases where a single parent is raising a child or children, parental abuse is more likely. The documentary host Donal MacIntyre is no stranger to hard-hitting and investigative pieces such as this one. Before Parents Under Attack, MacIntyre received a prestigious BAFTA nomination for his 2001 documentary on the Oklahoma Bomber Timothy McVeigh. However, Parents Under Attack was especially hard to make as it required not only the skills of a hard-hitting journalist, but also the skills of sympathy and sensitivity on this vulnerable topic. Tune in to see Donal MacIntyre in one of his finest exposés when 3’s Thursday Doco: MacIntyre Investigates – Parents Under Attack screens on Thursday, June 2nd at 8:30pm.
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Donal MacIntyre investigates a hidden form of domestic abuse in 3’s Thursday Doco – MacIntyre Investigates: Parents Under Attack, screening on Thursday, June 2nd at 8:30pm.