1Professor, Department of Counseling Psychology, Catholic Kwandong University, Korea
2Professor, Graduate School of Education, Hannam University, Korea
*Corresponding author: Kyeong-Ouk Jeong Professor, Graduate School of Education, Hannam University, Daejeon, South Korea E-mail: monicakyeongouk@hotmail.com
Online published on 21 September, 2018.
The purpose of this study is to understand how the abused children by domestic violence perceive their traumatized experiences. The subjects of this study were 32 children from 8 to 13 years old who were abused by domestic violence and who were sheltered in a child protecting institution. They were asked to draw a picture that was related to their experience of domestic violence, and they were also asked to tell a story about the scenes. From the collected data, the topics, scenes and stories in the pictures were qualitatively analyzed. It was revealed that the actual violence experienced by the children coincided with the patterns of violence portrayed in the paintings. As a result, 52 topics were derived from the pictures about the domestic violence and six main themes were derived from the storytelling about the violence. The six main themes were death, damage, destruction, aggression, conflict, and hopelessness. The implication of this study was to analyze drawings and storytelling in order to understand the mental and emotional state of the abused children and to help them overcome their traumatized experience.
Child abuse, Children’s counseling, Drawing, Storytelling, Qualitative research
