About 300 children experience domestic violence taking place before their eyes in any one month, according to statistics.
A snapshot of September 2008 showed that the Domestic Violence Unit at Appoġġ agency handled 337 children who reported seeing a parent being abused.
Snapshot statistics taken a year earlier, in November 2007, showed that 301 children witnessed domestic violence that month, explained Maryanne Gauci the service manager of Appoġg's Adult and Family Services.
She said the cases were handled by five full-time social workers with full caseloads, a part-timer, as well as a team leader and coordinator. She stressed the need for more resources to help victims of domestic violence and that included the children who were witnessing the abuse.
"If these cases are not given the necessary help, in future these children could be victims or perpetrators," she said during a press breakfast held to mark the European year for combating poverty and social exclusion.
"Research shows girls who witness domestic violence at home tend to internalise the abuse and are prone to becoming victims of abuse. Boys, on the other hand, tend to become aggressive and some even beat up their own mother," she said.
Ms Gauci added that victims of domestic violence, who were often women, were prone to social exclusion, poverty and mental health problems.
She explained that the unit also operated a perpetrators' programme that helped abusers reform. Last year 144 people attended the programme.
Marceline Naudi, the outgoing chairman of the Commission on Domestic Violence, elaborated that domestic violence was about power and control and was still hidden in society. Within the next few weeks, Dr Naudi's role will be taken on by Joanna Xuereb. Dr Naudi read out the words of a victim who explained that she endured 17 years of violence, in the presence of their children, from the man she loved and married.
"He would lock the children in a room while he breaks their mother's bones... When they came out they would see me all bloody," the woman said.