A father's history of physically assaulting the mother is correlated specifically to his likelihood of physical and/or sexual abuse of the children. The more severely a batterer abuses his partner and the more frequently he perpetrates intimate partner sexual abuse, the greater the risk the he will abuse the children. A survey of research with samples of battered women found that 40-70% of these women reported child abuse as well (Bancroft & Silverman, The Batterer as Parent, 2002 at 42-43.)

One study found that the risk for father-daughter incest is 6.5 times more likely in families where the father physically assaults the mother (Paveza, Risk Factors in father-daughter child sexual abuse, 1988). These risks of physical and sexual abuse of children, coupled with the profound psychological consequences noted earlier for children whose mothers are victims of intimate partner sexual abuse, indicate that courts should be extremely careful in assessing the capacity of abusers to be parents.

The Washington State 2006 Domestic Violence Manual for Judges includes comprehensive risk assessment guidelines for assessing risk to children from domestic violence that include several questions about the perpetration of sexual abuse against the child’s mother and the child (Ganley, Assessment of Risk Posed to Children by Domestic Violence (PDF 106KB), 2006).