The Crystal Fortress: the world of children witnessing domestic violence in the words of health and welfare professionals

Witnessing Domestic Violence (WDV) is defined by The Child Welfare Information Gateway as a psychological violence that has dramatic consequences on the psychophysical health of children. In order to contribute to the taking charge of Domestic Violence (DV) and according to researchers who show the role of fatherhood in ending the phenomenon, ViDaCS project puts fathers in their children's shoes by making them witness a scene of strong family conflict through the virtual reality. In order to structure the scene of DV, 16 Neapolitan health professionals dealing with children WDV were selected through a theoretical intentional sampling and interviewed. Narrative focused interviews were carried out, transcribed verbatim and analyzed through the Grounded Theory Methodology, using the ATLAS.ti 8 software. 319 codes were assigned to the texts, then grouped in 10 categories and 4 macro-categories. The “Cristal Fortress” emerged as the core category, summarizing the world of the children WDV in the voice of Neapolitan professionals; a world where family that would protect like a fortress, is made fragile by the “inexplicable and senseless violence”. The analysis also allowed to investigate the experiences and suggestions of the participants with respect to the network of services. In fact, the core category also reflected a network that should protect like a fortress, but which is made fragile by the difficulty of communication among the services. It revealed the importance of offering children a solid space in which to be protected, and it helped to think about useful guidelines for services dealing with WDV .