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Two mothers abused as children on raising their childrenMaking a plea for a differentiated approach anna and Eva, two married women in their late and early thirties, were physically and sexually abused as children. Nowadays they are both mothers. Janna has two children, a daughter of nine and a son of six. She works as a school counsellor and also deals with child abuse as a professional. Eva is a group leader in an institution for mentally handicapped adults. Her only son is one-and-a-half years old.This case study is part of a retrospective in-depth study on the long term consequences of physical and sexual abuse, focused on how parents cope with their abusive childhood histories and manage to raise their children. The project aims to provide insight in how intergenerational patterns of violence are transformed and broken and poses a challenge to old concepts of transmission of violence. Furthermore it could be useful for improving prevention and therapy as it may be supportive to parents abused as children. With both women two interviews were held, which lasted between one and a half and three hours. The conversations took place at the beginning of 1994. The motivation of both women to participate was strikingly similar. They complained about the societal invisibility of the aftermath of abuse in adult life and lack of opportunity to speak freely about the meaning of the former abuse to their current life. JEva was neglected and physically abused by her mother since she was a baby. As a child of six months, dehydration led to a half-year hospital stay. Her mother labelled her as disobedient, hyperactive and nervous. Eva's only sister, three years younger, was not as severely abused and broke contact with her parents for two years when she was a young adult. Eva was more fearful and compliant and tried to negotiate in order to get her sister and

Introduction: Mutations in the FOXE1 gene are implicated in cleft palate and thyroid dysgenesis in humans.Methods: To investigate whether zebrafish could provide meaningful insights into the etiology of developmental defects in humans related to FOXE1, we generated a zebrafish mutant that has a disruption in the nuclear localization signal in the foxe1 gene, thereby restraining nuclear access of the transcription factor. We characterized skeletal development and thyroidogenesis in these mutants, focusing on embryonic and larval stages.Results: Mutant larvae showed aberrant skeletal phenotypes in the ceratohyal cartilage and had reduced whole body levels of Ca, Mg and P, indicating a critical role for foxe1 in early skeletal development. Markers of bone and cartilage (precursor) cells were differentially expressed in mutants in post-migratory cranial neural crest cells in the pharyngeal arch at 1 dpf, at induction of chondrogenesis at 3 dpf and at the start of endochondral bone formation at 6 dpf. Foxe1 protein was detected in differentiated thyroid follicles, suggesting a role for the transcription factor in thyroidogenesis, but thyroid follicle morphology or differentiation were unaffected in mutants.Discussion: Taken together, our findings highlight the conserved role of Foxe1 in skeletal development and thyroidogenesis, and show differential signaling of osteogenic and chondrogenic genes related to foxe1 mutation.

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A B S T R A C T Battering as a consequence of power and powerlessness. Men learn to talk about domestic violence and their relationships with women and children through group workThis article reports on a working visit of a week (in September 2010), to three domestic abuse programmes aimed at male perpetrators of abuse, in Minnesota in the USA. So far, an effective domestic violence intervention, or a model or treatment which is superior, is lacking (Babcock, Green & Robbie, 2004). An important goal of the visit was to gain more insight into the ways American colleagues, in research and practice, deal with male perpetrators of abuse; how they perform risk analyses; how they provide help, support and safety. Also, the author wanted to know how they deal with the fact that these men often are fathers. The working visit provided valuable inside information. The author spoke with experts and practitioners, observed groupwork and, in doing so, gained insight into the power and powerlessness of male perpetrators of abuse and their roles as partners and fathers. Combining insights from these conversations and observations and existing theory, this article gives a practice based view on how American colleagues deal with these men.