Witnessing intimate partner violence is suffering violence

Key words: Violence, Maltreatment, Abuse, Resilience

Witnessing one or more events of intimate partner violence is a traumatic experience that deeply involves and marks children. Moving from the definition of the context, through the description of an illustrative case, the paper shows possible consequences of such an experience on the psychophysical health in children, their fragilities, resources, and foreseeable psychopathological consequences in the short and long term. In every case in which a child witnesses an intimate partner violence, the context evaluation must be careful and the protective attitude rigorous as well.