While Black women face a culture of abuse, Black men, who witnessed domestic violence at home when they were kids, are more likely to abuse their spouses, according to Fatherly, an national organization that empowers men to raise kids in a safe home environment and to be good husbands. STOCK PHOTO

Miami–Does the sinister side of rap music impact the Black community in general with its raunchy videos and degrading Black women lyrics?

Can the impact lead to domestic violence? Are there other factors within American culture that impact Black on Black domestic violence?

As Black women face a culture of abuse, Black men, who witnessed domestic violence at home while they were kids, are more likely to abuse their spouses, according to Fatherly, a national organization that empowers men to raise kids in a safe home environment and to be good husbands.

Black men remain traumatized most of their lives after watching their fathers or stepfathers abuse their mothers when they were adolescents.

Since some never recover from the ordeal, Black kids are more likely to follow the abusive pattern of the men of their households and their kids will be impacted as well, leading to generations of abuse by Black men.

Furthermore, some Black adolescents may display aggression towards their mothers, and are more likely to be harder on their daughters when they become fathers themselves.

Some Black daughters feel that their fathers are too strict and unfair compared to their brothers.

"There’s more research examining how children react to and recover from trauma generally, including cases in which there’s domestic violence in the home," Fatherly said in its report on domestic violence. "Still, less is understood about how children are affected specifically when they see a parent abused but aren’t physically abused themselves. Studying children, particularly traumatized ones, is more difficult than studying adults for many reasons. It’s also more difficult to tease out the effects on kids who witness violence, compared with kids who experience it firsthand, because they’re likely to also be victims of the abuser in the home."

A 2018 study found that up to 80 percent of kids in abusive homes have personally witnessed violence against their mothers.

But it’s much worse for a kid who witnessed his mother’s death at the hands of his father or stepfather.

According to Verywell Mind, a national online platform that helps children with mental illness, it is more difficult for a child to cope with his/her mother’s death if the individual saw the ghastly crime with their own eyes.

The lasting impression includes withdrawal, depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, aggressive behavior, physical abuse and repeated abusive patterns.

Some kids, between the ages of 7 and 10, who witness the homicide of their mothers, never rebound and instead turn to alcohol and drug abuse, dropping out of school, hanging with rogue crowds, and may even contemplate murder.

"As an all-too-common occurrence across the country, domestic violence is an uncomfortable feature of many American homes," said Verywell Mind Executive Director Elizabeth Plumptre. "An estimated 10 million people are affected by incidents of domestic abuse annually, a number that widens when silent victims, like children, are considered."

Plumptre said a child feeling the pain and anguish of witnessing violence doesn’t always guarantee that children will toe a different path.

She said in some cases, early exposure to abuse simply sets the stage for children to walk that same line in adulthood.

But kids who were not exposed to domestic violence at home may have witnessed abuse elsewhere and still follow the same pattern, Plumptre said.

"In these cases, male children might physically abuse their partners after watching their fathers do the same, or watching other men abuse women," she said.

Some kids try to intervene in the domestic disputes between their parents and become abuse victims themselves.

Black women from homes that witness domestic violence are more likely to be sexually assaulted by their partners in adulthood.

According to LA Casa De La Madres, a national non-profit which advocates against domestic violence and provides support for victims, 40 percent of Black women will experience the ordeal during their lifetimes, compared to 30.2 percent of white women.

More disturbing, Black women are three times more likely to die as a result of intimate partner abuse than white women.

"Not only do Black women face some of the highest rates of domestic violence in the country," said LA Casa De La Madres President Carmen Sanchaez, "Black women experience the public stigma, silence, and victim-blaming that surrounds domestic violence, and it’s magnified by a complex history of oppression, over-policing, and discrimination. As a result, Black survivors experience compounding barriers to safety, to asking for help, and to receiving help when it’s asked for."

One local man followed the abusive pattern of his mother’s boyfriend who helped raise him.

Warren, age 35, who didn’t want to give his last name, fearing his employment may be compromised said his mother was trapped in a cycle of abuse and that it was natural.

Warren admitted he abused his exwife which led to his arrest on domestic violence charges and their two kids were exposed to it.

"I was wrong……my kids who are in their teens, know what I did," said Warren, who lives in Miramar, Fla. "I told them I was wrong and told them not to do what I did when they get older."

Sanchez recommended that domestic violence victims, especially with children, leave their abusive spouses before it goes too far.

Patricia Moore, who lives in a MiamiDade domestic violence shelter, did just that.

Moore said her former live-in boyfriend physically and sexually abused her for three years.

She said it all came to a head one day when he was playing music on the stereo at a loud volume while she was talking on the phone.

Moore, 30, said she asked him to turn it down, but he refused, so she shut off the stereo herself.

He subsequently struck her in the face.

She said she finally had enough of the violence and called the police to file charges.

Moore said she’s been living at the shelter trying to get her life back together, with counseling and learning job skills.

"It was years of abuse from him and now I can do what I need to do to get back my life," she said. "The scares are still there but I’m moving on."

Moore said she was a stay at home mom to the couple’s six-year old daughter, who’s living at the shelter with her.

She said she’s learning clerical skills in hopes of landing a full time job and finding an apartment that’s affordable.

But some Black men who don’t follow the pattern of abuse become domestic violence victims themselves. According to Domestic Shelter.org, though 85 percent of victims are women, some men have suffered abuse at the hands of their female partners.

More male victims are out there but are ashamed to report the abuse to the police.

"The exact numbers are hard to confirm for multiple reasons, one of which is that domestic violence in general is vastly underreported by victims, many of whom feel scared or ashamed to disclose," Shelter.org said. "And many may not realize at the time that what they’re experiencing is abuse—nonphysical abuse including verbal, psychological and financial abuse is difficult to measure through statistics."