@Parsifal; thanks for that detailed response, be assured I do read what you post in response to my comments.
Re "... do you excuse people who are family violence perpetrators ...", I've posted many times on this forum that I'm neither religious nor a believer in forgiveness. That doesn't mean I think all people who perpetrate family violence should be executed - I acknowledge that situations are often complex and even often resolved without the family disintegrating.
My nephew who lives with a severe and life-threatening bipolar condition and who chose me as his mentor was subjected to family violence - until my sister divorced him his father even used to take to him with a baseball bat. What his father did is neither forgiven nor forgotten and nor will it ever be by anyone in my close family.
My wife's father was a abusive drunk who used to dish out hidings to his kids [family of nine]. The older boys fled home aged just fifteen and and thirteen, never to return until after he died and almost never contacting their mother. My wife was the next eldest and will tell you in a heartbeat that when I was around their father was a very different person. He died in his early fifties due to alcohol and tobacco related diseases but his violence has never been forgiven and will never be forgotten [my wife absolutely loathes violent, drunken males and as the eldest child at home used to stand up to her father despite what she copped from him].
