Children who have witnessed domestic violence are psychologically traumatized and need to go through therapeutic sessions for recovery, two experienced US trauma therapists said at a two-day child trauma therapy seminar held at Taiwan Normal University.
"Many studies show that over 90 percent of adult criminals have had traumatizing childhood experiences; therefore it is critical to provide therapy sessions to help traumatized children express their feelings," said Flora Calao, a trauma therapist at the New York Asian Women's Center.
Calao has been working with Asian women since the late 1970's and has acquired knowledge about the cultures and family interactions among Asians from different countries. Nicole Calao-Vitolo, Calao's daughter, is a doctoral candidate at the California Institute of Integral Studies, who specializes in using small animals to soothe the emotions of traumatized children in counseling sessions.
Calao and Calao-Vitolo are two of the lecturers attending the seminar, which has been organized by the Taipei Women's Rescue Foundation and is co-sponsored by the Bureau of Children of the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. More than 100 Taiwanese social workers and family counselors have participated in the seminar.
Calao said that Asian women tend to be more embarrassed about domestic violence.
"Usually, Asian women have more close-knit relationships with their relatives. However, while facing physical abuse at home, Asian women bear a lot of shame and are too embarrassed to say anything to their relatives," she said. She said the only time most abused Asian women decide to seek help is when the situation at home gets totally out of hand.
Calao said a complete therapeutic program is one that provides counseling sessions for the offender, the victim and the child who has witnessed the violence. As for the main victim, which is usually the mother, Calao stressed the importance of building a strong support network.
"We will help the mother to understand how traumatized a child can be by being a witness of domestic violence, and teach her how to develop better social skills and ways to obtain help. By doing so, we hope the mother will be able to build a strong support network, knowing that she is not alone in times of crisis," she said.
Calao-Vitolo said that the way members of an Asian family in the US interact with one another depends on the generation they belong to. "For instance, the second-generation immigrants, who were born and raised in the US, are usually more vocal about things that go on in the family than those who have just moved over," she said.
Former Czech Republic-based Taiwanese researcher Cheng Yu-chin (鄭宇欽) has been sentenced to seven years in prison on espionage-related charges, China’s Ministry of State Security announced yesterday. China said Cheng was a spy for Taiwan who “masqueraded as a professor” and that he was previously an assistant to former Cabinet secretary-general Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰). President-elect William Lai (賴清德) on Wednesday last week announced Cho would be his premier when Lai is inaugurated next month. Today is China’s “National Security Education Day.” The Chinese ministry yesterday released a video online showing arrests over the past 10 years of people alleged to be
THE HAWAII FACTOR: While a 1965 opinion said an attack on Hawaii would not trigger Article 5, the text of the treaty suggests the state is covered, the report says NATO could be drawn into a conflict in the Taiwan Strait if Chinese forces attacked the US mainland or Hawaii, a NATO Defense College report published on Monday says. The report, written by James Lee, an assistant research fellow at Academia Sinica’s Institute of European and American Studies, states that under certain conditions a Taiwan contingency could trigger Article 5 of NATO, under which an attack against any member of the alliance is considered an attack against all members, necessitating a response. Article 6 of the North Atlantic Treaty specifies that an armed attack in the territory of any member in Europe,
LIKE FAMILY: People now treat dogs and cats as family members. They receive the same medical treatments and tests as humans do, a veterinary association official said The number of pet dogs and cats in Taiwan has officially outnumbered the number of human newborns last year, data from the Ministry of Agriculture’s pet registration information system showed. As of last year, Taiwan had 94,544 registered pet dogs and 137,652 pet cats, the data showed. By contrast, 135,571 babies were born last year. Demand for medical care for pet animals has also risen. As of Feb. 29, there were 5,773 veterinarians in Taiwan, 3,993 of whom were for pet animals, statistics from the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Agency showed. In 2022, the nation had 3,077 pediatricians. As of last
XINJIANG: Officials are conducting a report into amending an existing law or to enact a special law to prohibit goods using forced labor Taiwan is mulling an amendment prohibiting the importation of goods using forced labor, similar to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act (UFLPA) passed by the US Congress in 2021 that imposed limits on goods produced using forced labor in China’s Xinjiang region. A government official who wished to remain anonymous said yesterday that as the US customs law explicitly prohibits the importation of goods made using forced labor, in 2021 it passed the specialized UFLPA to limit the importation of cotton and other goods from China’s Xinjiang Uyghur region. Taiwan does not have the legal basis to prohibit the importation of goods