Your child has never been hit. Yet they have seen everything, heard everything, absorbed everything. Under Belgian law, this child is not a mere bystander: they are a victim. The legislature, case law and international bodies now recognise this unambiguously.
In my daily family law practice, I observe that many parents — and sometimes even professionals — underestimate the impact of domestic violence on the child who is exposed to it. The notion that a parent can be violent towards their spouse while remaining a “good parent” to their children is a myth that Belgian and European law now clearly dismantle.
This article provides an overview of the legal framework, recent case law and the protection measures available in Belgium for children who witness domestic violence.
Scientific studies are unanimous: a child exposed to domestic violence suffers consequences comparable to those of a directly abused child. Anxiety, sleep disorders, academic difficulties, withdrawal, aggressive behaviour — the effects are profound and long-lasting. It is estimated that 40% to 80% of children living in a household where partner violence occurs are direct or indirect witnesses.
A child does not need to be physically struck to be traumatised. The atmosphere of fear, constant tension and emotional insecurity is sufficient to impair their development. The child lives in an agonising loyalty conflict, often carries the burden of secrecy, and may develop either identification with the aggressor or a “child-rescuer” role, attempting to protect the victimised parent.
Recent research in domestic violence highlights an essential concept: coercive control. Defined by the Belgian Act of 13 July 2023 as a pattern of repeated or continuous coercive or controlling behaviours that seriously harm the victim’s autonomy and psychological integrity, coercive control extends far beyond episodes of physical violence. It encompasses constant surveillance, isolation, humiliation and psychological domination — behaviours that the child perceives and internalises on a daily basis.
Even more concerning, specialists now identify “vicarious violence” (violences vicariantes): violence directed at children for the purpose of harming the other parent. The child is then not merely a witness but is instrumentalised as a vehicle for violence. This clinical reality is documented by Agathe Willaume, Director of the Service de Médiation et d’Aide à la Jeunesse (SMAJ) in the Belgian province of Luxembourg, in her study published in the Revue trimestrielle de droit familial (2025/1): according to SMAJ data, 74 to 85% of cases referred to parent-child contact centres actually involve a context of domestic violence, rather than a simple parental conflict.
Belgium ratified the Council of Europe Convention on Preventing and Combating Violence against Women and Domestic Violence on 14 March 2016. Its Article 26 is unambiguous: States Parties must take the necessary measures to ensure that the rights and needs of child witnesses of all forms of violence covered by the Convention are duly taken into account. The child witness is explicitly recognised as a victim of domestic violence.
The Act of 13 July 2023 on the prevention and combating of feminicides, gender-based homicides and violence represents a major step forward. Its Article 8 enshrines in Belgian law the definition of the child witness as a victim, in the best interests of the child, in accordance with the Istanbul Convention.
The Act of 18 January 2024 aiming to make justice more humane, faster and firmer III introduced a new aggravating factor: the presence of a minor child during the commission of an offence. Several articles of the Criminal Code now specify that the judge must take into consideration the fact that the offence was committed in the presence of a minor. This aggravating factor does not automatically increase the sentence, but it constitutes a strong signal from the legislature to the judiciary.
The message is clear: the Belgian legislature recognises that the child witness to violence is also a victim, and that their presence during the acts increases the offender’s responsibility.
EU Directive 2024/1385 on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence further strengthens this framework. It requires Member States to ensure that decisions on custody and visitation rights take into account all episodes of domestic violence and their consequences for the child.
Furthermore, the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), whose Articles 9, 12 and 19 are directly relevant, enshrines the child’s right to express their views in any proceedings affecting them (Article 12) and to be protected from all forms of violence (Article 19). Article 9 provides that separation of the child from their parents may be necessary when the child’s best interests so require — a principle that recent Belgian case law now applies effectively.
The Mons Court of Appeal delivered a notable ruling in March 2024, clearly establishing the principle that exposing a child to domestic violence constitutes in itself a violation of their best interests. The court reduced the violent parent’s custody time, recognising that maintaining unsupervised contact with a parent who had committed violence could perpetuate the child’s trauma.
The Brussels Court of Appeal ruling of 25 July 2025 (ref. 2025/PJ/235, published in Actualités du droit de la famille, 2025/6, pp. 248-256) marks a decisive milestone. It goes further than the Mons ruling on several essential points:
This ruling confirms a clear trend: Belgian courts increasingly recognise that the child’s best interests sometimes require breaking the link with the violent parent, rather than maintaining it at all costs.
The first thematic GREVIO report on Belgium, published in late November 2025, commends certain advances — notably the Feminicide Act and the centres for victims of sexual violence (CPVS). However, it also identifies significant gaps.
GREVIO notes in particular that violence against women is still frequently minimised by Belgian civil court judges, to the detriment of victims and their children. The report stresses the need to train judges to distinguish between parental conflict and domestic violence, and to systematically integrate the question of exposed children into their decisions.
On 6 October 2021, the European Parliament adopted a resolution on the consequences of domestic violence and custody rights on women and children (2019/2166(INI)), by 510 votes in favour, 31 against and 141 abstentions. This resolution establishes two fundamental principles:
This resolution constitutes an essential frame of reference for family law practitioners in Belgium.
One of the most persistent — and most dangerous — beliefs is the idea that a parent can be violent towards their spouse while remaining an adequate parent to their children. This notion rests on an artificial distinction between the conjugal relationship and the parental relationship.
Domestic violence destroys the entire family system. The perpetrator frequently uses the child as a lever of control over the victimised parent: threats to seek custody, instrumentalisation of visits, systematic denigration of the other parent in front of the child. After separation, custody and residence proceedings often become the new arena for the exercise of violence.
Belgian law is evolving in the right direction: the Brussels ruling of 25 July 2025 illustrates that courts increasingly refuse to accept this artificial distinction and take into account the global reality of domestic violence in their custody decisions.
The concept of coercive control sheds new light on this reality. As the Mons Court of Appeal demonstrated in March 2024 — the first Belgian ruling to explicitly apply this concept — domestic violence is not limited to physical blows. Coercive control constitutes an overarching pattern of domination that permeates all aspects of family life and continues, or even intensifies, after separation. Custody proceedings then become an extension of the controlling dynamic: multiplication of court applications, requests for shared residence despite documented violence, and reliance on the contested concept of parental alienation to discredit the child’s voice and the victimised parent.
It is now established that the distinction between “parental conflict” and “domestic violence” is not a matter of semantics: it is a question of child safety. Conflict presupposes symmetry between the parties; domestic violence involves an asymmetry of power and control. Confusing the two leads to placing the child in a co-parenting arrangement that perpetuates their exposure to violence.
Faced with the limitations of traditional arrangements, specialised approaches are emerging to support families dealing with violence. Conventional contact centres (“espaces-rencontres”), designed to facilitate the maintenance of the parent-child relationship, often prove inadequate when the breakdown of contact originates in a context of domestic violence.
The “Clinic of the Bond” model (Clinique du Lien), developed by the SMAJ and described by Agathe Willaume (Revue trimestrielle de droit familial, 2025/1), offers a radically different approach. This specialised framework distinguishes the psychological “bond” — work on the parent-child relationship — from mere physical “contact”. The objective is not to restore contact at all costs, but first to assess whether such restoration genuinely serves the child’s best interests.
This model rests on several essential principles: the use of a specialised violence detection framework, valuing the child’s voice, assessing the level of psychotrauma, and implementing “parallel parenting” rather than traditional co-parenting. Parallel parenting enables both parents to exercise their responsibilities without direct contact between them, thereby protecting the child from exposure to the dynamics of violence.
This clinical approach is fundamental because it raises awareness among judges and judicial practitioners of a reality that remains too often overlooked: in situations of domestic violence, forcing contact with the perpetrating parent may constitute secondary victimisation of the child. The child’s best interests require a specialised assessment, not the automatic application of the principle of maintaining the bond.
If you are facing a situation of domestic violence and your child is exposed to it, several protective measures exist under Belgian law:
Parallel parenting: where traditional co-parenting proves impossible or dangerous due to the context of violence, the judge may organise the exercise of parental authority through a parallel parenting arrangement. This framework minimises contact between the parents while allowing each to exercise their parental responsibilities autonomously, thereby shielding the child from exposure to controlling dynamics.
The evolution of Belgian and European law regarding the protection of child witnesses follows a clear and coherent trajectory:
2024: EU Directive 2024/1385 — requirement for Member States to take domestic violence into account in custody decisions.
This timeline demonstrates that the law is evolving towards increasingly effective protection of the child exposed to domestic violence.
Would you like a consultation? Contact me by e-mail at info@avocat-vdb.be. I receive clients by appointment at my office or remotely via video call. Consultations available in French and English.
