30/09/2015 09:15 BST | Updated 30/09/2016 06:12 BST

A Dysfunctional Family: What Are a Grandchild's Rights?

Raising a question that is rarely addressed...

A woman was raised in a dysfunctional family. When she was a baby, she was physically and psychologically abused, and regularly watched her mother beaten up and psychologically abused by her dad too. Sometimes that woman, then a child, would crawl in a corner of a room that was echoing with pain, and cover her face with her tiny hands somewhat protecting herself and somewhat trying not to see what was happening right in front of her. She did that with quiet sobbing and trembling while her dad was still going at her mother.

As a result, growing up, that child and now a woman, was finding it increasingly easy to believe that her dad could and can get away with anything. People saw it, neighbours saw it. People tried to do what was right, and yet no one managed.

The abusers pose rare talents, they are able to present themselves in a likable way should they feel the need to. And they are also able to manipulate their victims into believing it was their fault. That the accidents were results of their own stupidity.

Such dad's escapades would leave that little girl drained and shaky and yet every day was testing her to the limit. The worse part was to know that her mother could do nothing to protect herself nor her daughter.

Once, when the girl approached her mother and asked why don't they run away, the mother replied: "He really loves us, he just doesn't know how to show it."

Domestic abuse is not uncommon, and there are many organisations at hand to help with these situations. As well as an opportunity to flee your house at the first opportunity, to stay away from the abuser as far as possible... only some children, like the woman in question, keep trying to stay in touch with the family for the sake of the victims, her mother in this case.

And while the woman, once moved out of the family home tried to shut all of this out of her mind, as she often used to shut her eyes as a child just to imagine that none of it was real, the situation changed yet again.

That woman has a little baby now. Her parents' grandchild. And if she fails to show her grandchild to her parents regularly, she feels that her mother will suffer twice: once, from not seeing a child, and twice, from her husband blaming her for raising a shitty daughter. And yet if she does, arguments began to range freely and angrily over such topics as the little baby's name, the child's mothers qualities as a person, ways in which the child should be raised, and what else is wrong with the baby and the mother.

And the question dear reader is, what should the mother do? The domestic abuse is not easy to prove. In many cases, domestic abuse won't be reported because victims are afraid of consequences. In this case, the mother of a woman (and grandmother of a child) no longer accepts she is abused, she thinks her husband is like that as a result of what life did to him. And cases like this are not publicised. There is much done about preventing secondary abuse in a family, yet nothing to protect an adult with her child from the child's grandparents.

And yet that daughter, that woman who has a child, has the need to protect her parents' grandchild, and her own sanity... from her own family.