It is all too common to have a husband or wife as victims of domestic violence because of the actions of their partner. But we are now hearing that adults are the victims of domestic violence as a result of the actions of their children.

This is a disturbing trend and one in which we have a graphic account from an emotional father in to-day’s newspaper.

The violence that is perpetrated by this man’s son has been so bad over the years that he now says he is afraid of his own son.

Even the social workers are afraid of his son, because of his violence. He cannot control his own actions and when his temper goes nothing or no one can stop him, pleads the father who says he has been subjected to the abuse since his son was at primary school. He has even had to contact the police to deal with some of the incidents.

The problems have been so severe that this has caused a breakdown in the family with the father and his partner living apart and his children also separated from each other.

This man’s son has had problems from youth, diagnosed with ADHD and was often aggressive towards other pupils in school.

So where is the help for a family such as this?

According to this father, help is limited.

Having spent a lot of time with social workers, police and the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services, he says help has been limited.

In fact out of all the service organisations, he says the police are doing the service that others should be doing, advising him on the family situation but he feels there is no service ready to address the resultant problems.

In fact he complains that the support services just want to tick off their paperwork and goes as far as saying that support services had failed his family.

We as a society should have organisations available to people to find help and support at vulnerable times. History has shown us that the sooner those problems are tackled, the better for everyone involved. If left unchecked, the problems become worse as this man testifies.