Ireland is the home of euphemisms, descriptions that can distort and dilute grim realities. Consider the "Troubles", a term devised to describe the savagery of sectarian hatred, mass murder and bilious bitterness in Northern Ireland. How the faces of terrorised children, hysterical with fear on their first day back at school, can deserve such semantic softness is amazing. But therein lies an example of our way with words.
This collective creativity of expression causes us psychologically to deny many dangers to which children are exposed. Indeed, we too often ignore too many faces, with too much terror, because high on the list of truth dilutions lies the phrase "just a domestic".
This is one of our more hazardous economies of truth, which relegates victims of assault in the home to a lesser status than those who are attacked by a stranger on the street.
Domestic violence is a significant health hazard. It is a grievous assault on family life that impinges on the psychological welfare of all family members. In particular, it exposes children to unacceptable levels of aggression in their formative years. Research demonstrates that if this is not addressed, cycles of aggression, abuse and victimisation can be perpetuated from one generation to the next.
If the one place that should embrace and protect betrays, where is a child to go for physical protection, psychological courage and self-esteem?
There are significant emotional consequences for any child who must hide from violent outbursts in the family, or who must shield a parent or sibling from physical or verbal blows. Even to witness such violence is to be violated, with serious psychological and emotional repercussions.
We hear this, yet the message has yet to sink in. Why do we draw a distinction between public and private violence, particularly when it is perpetrated against the child?
To be assaulted by a stranger, hit, kicked, punched, mugged, spat at or demeaned, is a distressing and traumatic experience for any person. People who experience such attacks often have to cope with recurrent and distressing recollections of what happened.
Images of the event may intrude. During the day, there may be the confusing experience of feeling distanced and numb yet also on high alert, hypervigilant for every sign of danger. Even at night there is no reprieve, when nightmares about the event recur.
To be attacked at home by people who "love" you, or who may even use their "love" for you as an excuse, is even more traumatic: when you are attacked by a stranger, society has no doubt you were wronged.
The Garda makes vigorous attempts to find the offenders and bring them to justice. This gives the victim a feeling of validation; it confirms for them the reality of their distress and provides recognition of their worth to others. It is reassuring, after all, if society is outraged on your behalf.
But if the violence occurs at home, if you await the wrath of a drunken partner, if you spend your day trying to anticipate the humour and whim of a violent family member, if the attack is not random or isolated but yet another in a chronic series of assaults, then it would seem that few of the advantages and protections of the law are available to you. This is because what has happened to you is described as "just a domestic".
There is a perception that public violence is more serious than "domestic" violence. The residues of archaic legal and social beliefs exacerbate the problem: beliefs rooted in the view of wives and children as the possessions of husbands and fathers. (We must not forget that "rule of thumb" is a term derived from the condition that a stick or other object with which a husband was permitted to beat his wife should be no wider than his thumb.)
The statistics on wife battering are intolerably high. There are unacceptable incidents of husbands being abused. The thousands of applications made to the courts for barring orders is testament to the high levels of violence that occur in the "sanctuary" of the home.
What makes "domestic" violence even more traumatic for the recipient is that it takes place in the context of what is meant to be a loving relationship.
Home assault increases the trauma for victims because of the further psychological complexities of possible guilt, self-blame and self-loathing engendered by the experience that the person who is meant to love you abuses you. And you feel it may be your fault.
The spouse who shouts "don't make me hit you" has clearly not learnt that nothing "makes" a person behave violently - not "the drink", not the "provocation". Violence is the decision of the perpetrator, and it is the responsibility of that person alone. An attack by a family member is no less a crime than an attack by a stranger.
Why can't we see this? What incapacitates us when violence between spouses reaches dangerous levels? One might say that if spouses and partners will not report each other, if they will not press charges, then what can the Garda do? Many garda∅ and social workers report having brought a case to the doors of the courts only to have a spouse drop charges and undo their work of months to support them.
Yet whatever about the decisions of the adults involved, innocent children are left in a situation where they continue to witness the slaps and shouts of warring parents and hear the noise of shattering glass and breaking objects: domestic violence played out in terrifying close-up. Perhaps in those situations where partners drop criminal charges against each other, there should be a further mechanism that allows cautions to be brought on behalf of the children in the family, with automatic court-mandated family therapy to address the levels of aggression in the home. Perhaps we have lived with unacceptable levels of violence for too long.
The separation of public and private is so ingrained in our collective psyche that we condoned corporal punishment in our schools for decades. We still debate the rights and wrongs of "domestic" slapping of children, which is not yet legally prohibited.
We walk by when we hear that resounding sound in supermarkets, followed by the startled choke of the young child, catching its breath in shock at this sanctioned cruelty.
We watch tiny legs try to keep pace with angry adult footsteps, trailing behind or hanging on to a speeding buggy. We witness the imprint of a big hand on the back of small legs, the redness of an arm, the streaked faces, the hysteria of distress. We do not intervene.
It is easy to criticise, of course. Finding a solution is more difficult. But if we do not have answers to the challenge of tackling violence in our society, perhaps we can at least consider reviewing our assumption that parents will always protect their children, and that violent acts in the home are not the same as public aggression.
We might acknowledge that we have a serious and significant health hazard in the manner in which we, as a society, have tolerated unacceptable levels of violence in the private and the public spheres. We might refrain from blaming everybody else: the Garda, teachers, social workers, the clergy, health-care workers, the judiciary and all the other institutional recipients of our disquiet about public violence. We need to ask ourselves why we still participate in the belief that what happens behind closed doors is "just a domestic".
Marie Murray is director of psychology at St Vincent's Hospital in Fairview, Dublin, and director of the master's course in systemic family therapy at the University of Limerick