“All over the world, women are being emotionally and psychologically annihilated, while children are damaged in deeply inhumane ways by the very systems meant to protect them. As family courts and child protective services turn the erasure of domestic violence and child abuse into an industry, it becomes even more urgent to validate disclosures and safeguard truth tellers from both domestic and institutional harm. Speak4OurChildren has been courageously saving lives by elevating the voices of children and the loving parents who stand with them, as well as speaking to the need for urgent reform and international solidarity.”
— Bandy X. Lee, M.D., M.Div.
Forensic Psychiatrist and Expert Witness for the Courts
Harvard Program in Psychiatry and the Law
President of the World Mental Health Coalition
Cofounder of Preventing Violence Now
Former Yale University Faculty
Former Fellow of the U.S. National Institute of Mental Health
Consultant to the World Health Organization
Coauthor of the United Nations Secretary‑General’s Chapter on “Violence against Children”
Author of Textbook, “Violence”
“Children living with coercive control are not passive witnesses they are co-survivors. Their experiences are often ignored, distorted, or silenced by systems that fail to recognise the harm they endure. When family courts overlook children’s lived realities, they risk enabling further trauma. As I’ve shown in my research, children must be recognised as direct victims of coercive control and listened to with the seriousness their experiences deserve.”
— Dr Emma Katz
Senior Lecturer in Criminology, author of Coercive Control in Children’s and Mothers’ Lives (Oxford University Press)
“Coercive control is not a private matter. It is state-enabled child abuse when institutions dismiss or deny its existence and mislabels it as “high-conflict parenting.” Every day that systems look the other way, children are forced into survival strategies that fracture their attachment to their protective parent. This is institutional betrayal. Our children cannot afford silence. They deserve protection by the very systems meant to safeguard them. And mothers who refuse to be erased are not being “difficult,” they are often the only line of defense standing between the child and the predatory parent.”
— Christine M. Cocchiola, DSW, LCSW
leading expert on coercive control and its impact on adult and child victims. As a social work professor, she holds a Doctorate in Clinical Social Work from New York University, where she was mentored by Dr. Evan Stark, a pioneering researcher in coercive control.
Dr. Cocchiola presents internationally on coercive control dynamics, training professionals, advocates, and protective parents on effective intervention strategies for victims of abuse. A social justice advocate since age 19, she developed The Protective Parenting Program, an evidence-based, attachment-focused therapeutic model for parents whose children have been harmed by abusive partners.
Her scholarly contributions include coining the terms “malicious fracturing of attachment” and “disintegrated intuition”—both describing the psychological impact on children raised by abusive parents. Drawing from her experiences as both a survivor and protective parent, Dr. Cocchiola hosts the Perfect Prey Podcast and has authored the children’s book Every Moment of Every Day and co-authored FRAMED: Women in the Family Court Underworld. Her TEDx talk, “It is ALL Coercive Control,” is available on YouTube.
As the founder and CEO of Kaleidoscopic UK and, first and foremost, as a child and adult survivor of domestic abuse I want to share a simple truth: we stand united as survivors.
United in our hope and our demand for vital change.
United in our voices and lived experiences that others have repeatedly tried to silence.
United in our vision of a society and a system that truly supports, understands, and protects us and our children from abusers.
I give my full support to Speak4ourChildren who are uniting and lifting survivor voices across Ireland, challenging the very systems that should be safeguarding every person who has endured domestic abuse.Together, we can and we must create the change survivors and our children deserve, until all have systems where we are heard, seen and protected, then none of us are.
— Victoria Robertson BEM
CEO of Kaleidoscopic UK
