Latent sibling violence

This article analyses latent violence to highlight important aspects of our empirical data: qualitative interviews with women who have been subjected to violence by their siblings. The concept points to the fear experienced by victims in close relationships, and the adaptations they make to avoid violence. Although the concept has been applied to family and intimate partner violence, it is also useful to describe sibling violence. Latent violence occurs when violence is not openly acknowledged; indeed, sibling violence often goes unnoticed. This invisibility can be associated with experiences of powerlessness and unpredictability for victims, who may have difficulty defining their experiences. While we emphasize the vulnerability described in the interviews, we also highlight and explore the interviewees’ strategies of resistance. Our interviewees describe how they created alternative safe spaces in spite of the violent context in which they lived, including the use of hideouts and secret refuges, outdoor places as well as fantasy spaces or escape plans. Their strategies show that children subject to latent sibling violence should be understood not as passive victims, but as actively strategizing to cope with situations that many cannot escape due to their age and lack of parental understanding.


Introduction
The aim of this article is to use the concept of latent violence to highlight certain aspects of our empirical data on the experience of being a victim of sibling violence.Latent violence is a concept first proposed by Isdal (2017) and is used by many social institutions and social workers dealing with family and intimate partner violence in Sweden.It points to the constant fear that many victims live with, and the adaptations they make to avoid exposure to violence.This kind of family violence, Isdal (2017: 64, our translation) writes, 'is always present by virtue of its ability.Almost everything in life becomes a strategic behaviour in order to try to avoid new violence'.We believe that the concept of latent violence is not only useful to describe certain aspects of intimate partner violence but also, and perhaps even more so, to describe sibling violence.
This article is based on qualitative interviews with 20 women, all of whom have been subjected to violence by a sibling.Our aim is two-fold: first, to examine the interviewees' narratives of experiences of latent sibling violence, and second, to highlight the strategies they employed to cope with living in a context where violence was ubiquitous.Here, we wish to emphasize the vulnerability that can result from being subjected to sibling violence.This vulnerability is related both to the violence in itself and to the fact that this kind of violent experience is rarely spoken about in society.
We would also like to draw attention to the ways in which the interviewees have resisted and found strategies to deal with the violence.As a child, it is basically impossible to leave a sibling relationship.As David Finkelhor writes in his preface to John Caffaros' ([1998] 2014) book about sibling violence (s.ix): 'They are stuck'.However, our interviewees describe acts of resistance and ways to cope in the violent environment.Although no one should have to live with violence, or be forced to find avoidance strategies, it is of utmost importance that we gain knowledge not only about the violence, but also about how victims resist and manage to find strength in a harmful environment.Thus, while we recognize the apparent vulnerability of the interviewees as children, we also point out and explore their strength and ability to find and use different survival strategies despite their difficult situation.
To our knowledge, latent violence in relation to victims of sibling abuse, and the strategies actualized in relation to this kind of violence, has not been studied.We consider this an important subject, not least because, as we will show below, the hidden nature of sibling violence has been one of the main factors that has made the interviewees' lives particularly challenging, and has had severe consequences in later years.The concept of latent violence is not widely used in research.Instead psychological violence is often used to understand, for example, direct violent threats (which also can be a part of latent violence).However, the concept of latent violence goes beyond psychological violence to also include indirect threat, in which the victim is made to imagine what the sibling might do next.This leads to constant awareness of the small signs and non-verbal cues in the home environment that point to an imminent explosion of violence: an important feature of sibling violence that we will explore.

Previous research
We will introduce three areas of previous research that are relevant to our topic: sibling violence, children's agency, and latent violence.All three are subjects that have had little attention in research, and need to be acknowledged and highlighted.

Sibling violence
In Sweden, research on sibling violence is relatively scarce.Sometimes this violence is highlighted in studies concerning other forms of violence (see, for example, Cater et al., 2014;Edfeldt, 1985;Uhnoo, 2011), but few studies take sibling violence as a separate topic (see, however, Burcar Alm, 2020Alm, , 2021;;Rypi, 2023).Internationally, and mainly in the United States and Great Britain, there is more research, although it remains a relatively new research subject.Much research on sibling violence has been conducted in psychology, often with a quantitative focus (for a more in-depth review of the research in the area, see Burcar Alm, 2021).In the United States, Vernon R. Wiehes' (1997) study Sibling abuse -hidden psychological, emotional and sexual trauma, first published in 1990, helped draw attention to sibling violence and construct it as a social problem.In an American context there are also information campaigns and targeted support.In Sweden, however, sibling violence is not part of the general discourse on violence in close relationships.It is sometimes referred to as sibling violence but there is, to our knowledge, no support specifically directed at those who experience it.Part of the problem with drawing attention to sibling violence is that there is also a normalizing discourse about everyday sibling conflict which may prevent violence from being recognized (cf.Edfeldt, 1985).McDonald and Martinez (2016) argue that sibling abuse is particularly troubling as it is not only frequent but also lasts for years.Often, sibling violence goes unnoticed, and may be seen -and named -simply as sibling rivalry or quarrels.This hinders those who are victimized from identifying it or speaking out about it (Elliott et al., 2020).As parents often do not perceive sibling abuse or admit to its existence, and because of taboos around talking about it in the family even when it is perceived as abuse, the violence is allowed to continue (Bass et al., 2006;McDonald and Martinez, 2016;Morrill-Richards and Leierer, 2010).Meyers' (2017) study of sibling abuse emphasizes that this situationsilence and lack of support -leads to a feeling of being unprotected and fearfulness about further violence.She adds: 'The narratives from this study add another dimension of unpredictability, which creates a chronic state of terror and a sense of helplessness and powerlessness in the ability to selfprotect' (Meyers, 2017: 346).A child who has been psychologically and/or physically abused by a brother or sister for all or part of their childhood, without a caretaker intervening, becomes used to being on guard: tensed up, anxious to find a self-protection strategy, or else be subject to a beating (or offensive language, name-calling, etc.) from their sibling (Meyers, 2017).

Children's agency
While social science research used to depict children as passive, vulnerable, or not (as) competent, James and Prout (1997) talk about the 'new childhood paradigm' that emerged in the 1990s.This approach to the study of childhood introduced a view of children as agents, and of childhood as a socially constructed category, and has started to emerge in research about how children cope with violence in the family.However, according to Överlien (2016: 680), the medical perspective, which describes children experiencing domestic violence as 'passive recipients of potentially traumatic experiences', remains dominant.Överlien (2016, see also Överlien andHydén, 2009) argues that the common portrayals of passive, vulnerable children do not resemble the ways children present themselves and their lives in qualitative interviews.Research on child abuse has shown that children sometimes experience a loss of control over their abuse narratives when their vulnerability comes to the attention of social services (Thulin et al., 2020).Contemporary discourse emphasizes the importance of 'children being allowed to speak' but, as James (2007: 262) points out, 'giving voice to children is not simply or only about letting children speak; it is about exploring the unique contribution to our understanding of and theorizing about the social world that children's perspectives can provide'.

Latent violence
In this section, we highlight research in which the terms 'latent violence' or 'latent victimization' are applied, including examples where terms with similar meanings, such as 'intimate terrorist violence' and 'coercive control', are used.
First, discussing latent violence in the context of peace and conflict research, the well-known researcher Galtung (1969: 172, our emphasis) writes: Manifest violence, whether personal or structural, is observable . . .Latent violence is something which is not there, yet might easily come about . . .In such cases we need a way of expressing that the personal violence is also there the day, hour, minute, second before the bomb, shot, fist-fight, cry -and this is what the concept of latent violence does for us.
Galtung mainly describes situations of war, which is why it is notable that some of our interviewees used similarly war-like references (like 'terror' and 'hell') when describing their experiences of latent (sibling) violence.
Second, the term latent victimization is used by Ahadi (2018) who, in contrast to Galtung, writes of a similar context to ours: that of family violence.She defines it as: A type of victimization in which firstly its label as a victimization is not visible or apparent and, in some cases, it is not even acceptable as a victimization; secondly, it does not conform to the known definition of victimization; thirdly, there are no statistics concerning it; fourthly, the duration of victimization does not have a certain limit; and finally, in most of the cases, criminalization of such victimization is not known or at least there is not a direct criminal.(Ahadi, 2018: 309) This definition brings up several aspects that may be even more typical of sibling violence than of the intimate partner violence to which Ahadi (2018) refers.Though still under-counted, intimate partner violence has achieved a degree of recognition in society.By contrast, sibling violence is still not often seen or named as violence, and is normalized in social discourse, at least in Sweden, where we have conducted our research (Burcar Alm, 2020, 2021;Rypi, 2023).One reason for this may be that, because sibling violence happens between children, it does not necessarily have a recognized perpetrator; if anyone is held to account, it is primarily the parent(s), for not stopping the violence.The part of Ahadi's definition that is most similar to Isdal's concept of latent violence (as well as to Galtung's) is that it is not recognized as victimization and that the 'duration of victimization does not have a certain limit'.This points to the experience of boundlessness in latent violence: it is present all the time as a pervasive atmosphere coloured by palpable fear and tension, and often coupled with extreme loneliness, as the violence is not named or recognized in the family.
Johnson's (1995, see also Leone et al., 2007) rather extreme term intimate terrorist violence has a similar meaning to latent violence in an intimate partner relation.It is described as being embedded in a general pattern of power and control.What distinguishes intimate terrorist violence from concrete physical and emotional violence is that it traps the victim in the relationship by creating an overwhelming sense of fear and by radically diminishing their personal resources. 1Studies utilizing Johnson's typology demonstrate that intimate victims of terrorist violence report symptoms of depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD; Leone et al., 2007).This also relates to latent sibling violence, which seems to have the most severe consequences psychologically for victims compared with the other forms of sibling violence described (Isdal, 2017).
Another example of a term with a similar meaning to latent violence is coercive control, as used by Stark (2012).Coercive control, now criminalized in Sweden (in 1999) and England (in 2015), goes beyond a violation of a person's physical integrity and involves the deprivation of their liberty, dignity, and equality.What differentiates coercive control from other kinds of (domestic) violence, Stark (2012: 203, our emphasis) writes, is that: The victim's vulnerability to future harm is a function of her objective or structural subordination rather than of the level of physical violence . . .The full scope of coercive control as a form of abuse only becomes apparent . . .over time and when obeying an abuser's demands is largely based on fear of what will happen to her if she disobeys, the 'or else' proviso.
Again, the term is used to describe intimate partner violence, not sibling violence, but it points to something very similar: while it is important to pay attention to severe physical violence, an essential aspect is the constant fear, and the limited life conditions in which victims live.

Methods and materials
Our study is explorative and based on qualitative interviews with 20 adult women 2 who were formerly victims of long-term sibling abuse.In our search for interviewees, we placed advertisements on noticeboards (e.g. at universities, libraries, family centres, and therapy clinics) as well as digital forums (family-related websites).We searched for persons who were exposed to 'sibling violence', but we did not initially exclude 'sibling quarrels' as we were also interested in potential boundaries.However, we were contacted by persons who themselves described serious victimization, perhaps due to the wording 'violence'.
The interviewees came from different parts of Sweden and were, at the time of the interviews, aged between 25 and 77 years, with an average age of 42 years.Of course, interviewing people about the past has certain limitations and implications, for example, that they may have forgotten details.Our research, however, concerns violent situations that often have not ended but simply changed from physical violence to psychological violence, for example, when a violent sibling has moved away from home, and the interviewee is still processing their experience.Even in cases where the violence stopped during childhood, it stands out as something that has had a strong impact, which is not easily forgotten; indeed, several interviewees tell us that they have tried to forget but not succeeded.This article uses a narrative and constructionist perspective, which is not trying to prove an objective truth but is interested in the interviewees' inter-subjective meaning-making narratives (Riessman, 1993).
The interviewed women described both physical 3 and psychological 4 violence from their sibling(s), and of being victims of parental neglect. 5Their narratives show that the violence was more or less constantly present, but that it may have taken different forms.This can be exemplified by how one of the women estimated what would be labelled 'physical abuse' in a police report to have happened 3-4 times a year, but that the psychological violence and harassment went on constantly for about 10 years.While experiences differed between the interviewees, what they had in common -and what they highlighted as particularly troubling -was the constant fear of being victimized, knowing that the sibling may use violence at any time.Most of the women reported being abused by an older brother, with the abuse most often starting early in childhood.Words like 'terror' and 'hell' were common when describing the situation they had been in, and sometimes still were.Although the physical violence had stopped, they still often experienced psychological violence.Only a few had functional relationships with their violent siblings.Several had, at some point, contacted professional psychological support to manage their experiences.As adults, our interviewees described symptoms like constant pain in the body; severe, and sometimes chronic, depression, and anxiety; PTSD; and stomach problems.Such symptoms have been described as consequences particularly related to this kind of prolonged, non-articulated violent situation (McDonald and Martinez, 2016).
The interviews 6 were conducted face-to-face or via Skype, FaceTime, or telephone, had a conversational character, and were relatively long.Some participants were interviewed more than once.In our interviews we tried to create a narrator-friendly climate (cf.Rahemtulla, 2016), using questions formulated using open-ended prompts, for example, 'can you tell me how it was to grow up in your family?'We have been inspired by Hydén's (2012) focus on narrating and listening in interviews.Hydén (2012) writes that: 'It is in dialogue with a listener that the victim's experience is given a linguistic expression and meaning; it is in dialogue with a listener that the victim's emotional and bodily response to violence can be articulated'.We were careful to give the interviewees room to talk about what they felt was important to pay attention to, to listen, and to convey their narrated experiences.In our interviews as well as our analysis, we adopted a narrative focus in which we took the individual's story of parts of her or his life as the central point (cf.Riessman, 1993).The narratives and themes were identified through an abductive qualitative research strategy, an explorative but not completely inductive approach (Bryman, 2018).We were interested in investigating a theoretical perspective (latent violence and resistance/adaptation strategies related to the violence), while being open to new ideas and insights from the data.
Going through the data, we observed different themes that responded to our research questions and theoretical perspective.We organized extracts in which the interviewees described their own experiences and viewpoints based on these themes.

Empirical findings
In this section, we first describe the experience of being a victim of latent violence, and second, their strategies for resistance.The first part is not as detailed as the second part, but provides important background to understanding the situation that the interviewees described as part of everyday life in their childhoods, which they dealt with, and defended against, in different ways.In these ways, the strategies for dealing with the latent violence could vary widely but all involved trying to create at least minimal security in a fundamentally insecure environment.

Experience of latent violence
Violence is not only about punches, kicks, and slaps, or harsh, minimizing, and threatening words, but the very atmosphere of latent violence that victims live in (Isdal, 2017).One of our interviewees, Helena, recounts how she was constantly on guard, looking for small signs of her sibling's mood, in an effort to avoid sudden outbreaks of violence and its long-term consequences: Because all these years, I've had a lot of pain in my body: in my neck and things like that.A lot of migraines -which have . . .not disappeared, but have been relieved incredibly since I, or we [she and her brother], broke up with each other.And I have understood, that a lot of all that fear and tension, it settled in my body . . .To be constantly vigilant: 'will I be beaten today?' [Now] I've escaped that, I have been able to relax in my home and not be scared anymore.
Another interviewee, Lovisa, also talks in terms of constantly sensing her sibling's mood and being prepared for attacks: 'You can hear how a cupboard door is closed, you know.What mood is he in? . . .It becomes automatic.You hear how someone is closing the door'.Sometimes parents contributed to 'learning' what was not to be said or done to keep the sibling in a good mood.Some interviewees talk about how they learnt to keep their successes, for example, good grades, to themselves to not get beaten.The threat of violence is described as ubiquitous, but by adapting and feeling the mood, they were sometimes able to avoid being violated.Kristina describes how all the different forms of violence she was subject to may not have been very serious individually but, taken together, and with constant repetition, they constituted a horrible situation.
Marlene and Andrea both use strong emotional terms to describe their life situation as children and young people.This can be compared with the interviewees in Meyers' (2017: 343) study, who also experienced sibling violence and who refer to emotional attacks as being 'verbally pummelled', 'torture', and 'profoundly hurt'.While the concrete (physical) violence by their siblings is described as very painful, at least it had a clear ending each time.But everyday life living close to a violent sibling, not knowing when violence would erupt again, with no adult intervening or supporting, created feelings of boundlessness and being overwhelmed: Marlene first laughs at her own description of her experiences as it sounds so extreme (and probably she needs to distance herself), but then realizes that it is actually an accurate portrayal.Andrea says that 'usually it was some well-aimed blows and then it was over', and that the continuous fear and expectation of forthcoming violence was even worse, particularly as her sibling took advantage of this: Andrea: . . .for me it was terror, you know.Pure terror, for a time.Exactly.An anxiety, from expecting it?Almost as bad as actually experiencing it.Andrea: Exactly.
Susanne also speaks about 'terror'.She says that the physical violence was more frequent during some periods than others, but that 'terror was always there.[Knowing that] he can attack me . . .The threat was always there'.Annelie says that she cannot remember any 'extreme physical violence' but that 'it was still a feeling of terror, I was never safe'.The constant fear of possible violence may, as the interviewees describe, lead to strategically adapting by sensing the sibling's mood, to avoid violence.This can be seen as the violent sibling being in total control and the interviewee being suppressed.At the same time, the interviewees describe strategies to avoid the sibling or their violence, for example, by finding safe havens or daydreaming, which gave them a sense of control, at least to some extent or for part of the time.Callaghan and Alexander (2015) describe how children living in violent contexts use various strategies to find and construct alternative safe spaces for themselves.These include the use of hideouts, secret refuges and outdoor places, and the creation of fantasy or dream spaces.As in a war situation, the victim usually does not just stay passive (though 'freezing' can also be a trauma response; cf.van der Kolk, 2014), but tries to find ways to cope and strategies to avoid and prevent the violence.Such strategies are also an integral part of Isdal's (2017) definition of latent violence, and are the focus of this section.Here, we discuss the subthemes emerging from our interviewees' narratives, which show their creativity and ingenuity as children and youth exposed to sibling violence.

Strategies of resistance
Tiptoeing around: adjusting and avoidance behaviour.As mentioned above, the interviewees describe different ways of adjusting their behaviour, either consciously or unconsciously.Marlene, for example, describes a situation where her brother thought she was 'too loud' and she literally learnt to tiptoe around him and try to be invisible:

Marlene:
So that as soon as I made a sound, or if I was listening to music, or if I was talking too loud, then when I was a teenager, on the phone, or something, then he came and knocked on my door.(Interviewer: Yes.)So it was like -I always had to tiptoe -Interviewer: Tone it down.Marlene: Kind of.To not -not be heard, not be visible.That -I became very good at that.
Helena describes something similar: when she was 8 years old, if she put on music in her room, her brother would run in and hit her with his fists until she fell.Then he would turn off the music.When asked how she dealt with this situation, Helena describes how she learnt to avoid 'disturbing' her brother: Interviewer: Okay.Mm.But you -did you -I think, did you have strategies to deal with this?Howhow could you live with it?Helena: It developed over the years we lived together when I, until the age of sixteen, I tried to avoid everything that could disturb him.For instance, I stopped listening to music in my room.And in the area where we lived there was an old school.So I took my stereo on the bike, put it in a box.And then I brought LPs and cassettes on my bike.So I biked there, and I could listen to the music there, because then I wouldn't irritate him.So that -and I snuck around a lot, along the walls, at home.
Helena describes how she gave in to her brother's will, but found a way to continue listening to music in a safe haven, an old school.This may be seen as an example of latent violence: her brother constantly controlled her actions, but she found a strategy to find some freedom in an extreme situation.
Another of the interviewees, Lovisa, describes how her brother stopped using violence against her during a period when she had a boyfriend who was a former abuser himself, and who was one of the few people who was not afraid of her brother.Lovisa was not beaten by the boyfriend, like his girlfriends before and after her, and when reflecting on her avoidance strategy, she speaks about her ability to sense moods, learnt from growing up with sibling violence.For instance, she could sense her brother's mood from how he closed a cupboard door.She explains: What do you think, then?Like, for example, 'now I will not .'.. Lovisa: No, but if I want to do something and he says no, then you think: 'can I push it or can I not push it?'Interviewer: Aha. Okay.Mm.How careful you should be -. . .Lovisa: Mm.I did that, ah, the same thing, with him [the boyfriend] like -Interviewer: So you could suddenly find yourself avoiding it, without even thinking about it, -? Lovisa: Avoid getting beaten, yes.
Keeping a physical and psychological distance from the violent sibling.The second kind of strategy is the victim's constant efforts to keep a physical and psychological distance from the violent sibling, in both childhood and adulthood.Annika experienced physical violence from her brother as a child, and when they grew older it turned into psychological violence.For a very long time ('all her life', as she depicts it) she had longed for, and tried to get, a 'normal' sibling relationship.Eventually, she realized that this attitude would just hurt her, such as when her brother acted as if she was invisible at family gatherings and refused to greet her.Annika has now given up trying to stay in touch to protect herself from being ridiculed and devalued (something that several of the interviewees talk about): [As an adult] I have understood that I have to protect myself.It is almost impossible to be close to him or expect him to answer anything . . .Because I had a longing all the time to have a brother like -like this.And it [the longing] has followed me for quite some time, all my life actually.So now I have understood that I can't expect that (laughs) . . .So it worked.That Christmas party [which she had talked about before] worked.I really kept my distance, physically as well.Avoid, like, contact and everything.No expectation, nothing.
Mira describes one of her earliest memories, of being alone with her sister -as she was much of the time -and trying to keep a physical distance: So I didn't get too close to her.If I was too close to her so -so -so I could, kind of, get hit.Or if I -if we were sitting on the couch and I was breathing too loudly, then I could get choked as well.Or -so, so.So that -it was, like, a way for her -because she -What I think is that she had a great need to feel in control.
Lovisa talks in a similar vein about early memories of her older brother being angry, and how she and her sister (who was also abused) knew that they would have to take another way out of the house to avoid him: When we had been sitting [together] and he has threatened [with violence]: to come home and -. . .we don't know what to do . . .When we have lived in a place, in a house where we had, like, two exits, you could go out the back and in [from] the front . . .with the shoes on and think 'If he takes that road we go out that way'.
Therese talks about how the home is supposed to be a refuge, when coming home from a tough day at school, for example: 'but that has never been the case for me, it has really been the other way around'.Avoiding the violent sibling also meant having to avoid home or finding a place at home to hide.Andrea describes how she would hide in the bathroom for hours until her mother came home: Interviewer: How long could it be?Andrea: It could still take a while -I could think that it probably was an unreasonable long time for me to sit in the bathroom, until she came home.(laughs) Interviewer: Oh. Andrea: It could still be, like maybe, a couple of more hours -. . .Then mother would come home.And then it was that if I locked myself in and he [her brother] got the door open, it got even worse.So the best thing was to not lock myself in at all so I wouldn't get as much of a beating.
Finding safe havens.The third kind of strategy we describe here is to find 'safe havens': secure places the victims could go to, to get some momentary space and freedom from violence.These are not what Helena described in the previous section, a space to escape to for a specific activity (in her case, listening to music), which was not possible to do at home -but simply to get a break from the difficulties at home.Andrea describes how she would go out to the animals on the farm or into the forest to avoid 'the fuss' at home: We had a farm with some animals and so on.So I went and stayed with the animals or, well, went to the forest by myself . . .Wanted to avoid my siblings, I wanted to avoid the fuss . . .So that -that was probably my strategy.
Marlene describes the importance of getting her own room, after having to share with her violent brother: Marlene: to try to be as much by myself as I could.So when I was about ten, I got my own room.Before that, I had shared a room with him.Interviewer: Oh, I understand.Marlene: But then I got my own room.And then I stayed there as much as possible.Interviewer: Mm. Mm.It was your little safe zone, or what would you say?Marlene: Yes. Unfortunately, it, basically, had a shared wall with his room.
Several interviewees describe how they would go to a friend's house as often as they could, sometimes also to prevent friends from discovering what was going on in their own homes.Karin talks about how much she 'loved spending time with others' and that she wished she could move to a support family.Mira also describes spending time with friends as an avoidance strategy, but also how she would go into the dark cellar in the family home, or spend time in her dad's office: Mira: I knew that she [her sister] didn't like the dark . . .And I tried to spend as much time as possible with my dad and do things he thought were fun.So I sat a lot in his . . .office and I was quiet.Was as quiet as possible so that -so that I would get to stay there.So -Interviewer: You would be safe there.Mira: Yes. Exactly . . .So that it was like -it was a lot like trying to find strategies to like -. . .So that I always tried to be where the adults were.Always.
Pretending to be ill or skipping school are also described as ways of creating a temporary safe haven.Helena says that she pretended to be sick since she wanted to be alone with her mother without her brother interfering: 'I claimed that I was sick so I could be alone with her when he [her brother] was at school'.Another interviewee, Ursula, similarly describes how, when she was very young, she pretended to be ill to get a chance to be alone in the house.When she was a little older, she started to skip school because she 'needed to rest so very much, I needed to be completely alone in the house to be able to rest'.
Making exit plans, 'escaping' and daydreaming.A fourth strategy described by interviewees is to have exit plans and daydreams that would get their minds focused on ways to get out from the situation, even if these were not, according to them, very realistic.Helena describes how she often daydreamed about being adopted by another family, and how she kept that dream alive by thinking about all the details, drawing the imagined house, the adoptive parents, and so on: I had some weird [idea] that I would come to a family that lived in a white . . .brick house where I would get a room, a bright room, with a wide bed that stood in the middle of the room and not by a wall, . . .and I always drew this -I drew this house and what my room would look like and what my parents would look like and how they would be, etc.So I put together fairy tales around it . . .So it was my refuge.To be saved in some way.I dreamed of it.That someone someday would just come and say 'You, you should not live here anymore, in this family, but you should come live with us'.
Even a secret plan to commit suicide could be a way to create an emergency exit as one interviewee, Bodil describes.If it got really bad she could always get out that way, she thought.When, as an adult, she got a dog, she suddenly realized that this plan was still alive, but that she would have to let go of it since she now had responsibilities: When I got Sixten [her dog], then I knew, when I got her, that I started crying once because I thought: 'Damn, now I can't kill myself.I have a dog to take responsibility for'.I have never made a suicide attempt, but it has been there and I know that one day I kind of became so -'my god, there is no suicidal thought in me anymore'.It wasn't something I shared with people . . .It had . . .existed as an emergency exit as well as a possibility, but I've never been able to talk about it.Some of the interviewees also talk about how they could 'escape' by reading books, painting, or listening to music.Lena speaks about how she listened to heavy metal as a way of letting go of her anger, and Lisbeth describes how music was an 'escape from reality and a source of joy'.Vendela answers the question about her strategies to deal with the violence she was exposed to, that 'music for example had enormous significance for me'.
Going to a parent.An outsider might assume that seeking help from a parent would be the most common strategy.The interviewees certainly describe trying to get help from parents, but this seldom helped, in their experience.Instead, it often led to the parent questioning what they were told, disbelieving the account, or normalizing the violence.Andrea describes how her mother was aware of what was happening but did not have the strength to put a stop to it.Instead, she would tell Andrea to find shelter: My father was quite absent . . .So it was more mom who got to take on that bit like that.And she was quite -she must -she didn't feel well for a period.She was almost burnt out . . .So when I came and asked for help, she didn't have much energy I think.She could only -if I was beaten when I was home and she was still at work and I called her she could say, 'Lock in until I get home'.
Mira also describes the strategy to try to get help from her parents as futile.Her dad only got angry because of the noise, she says, and her mother denied that there was any kind of problem: Mira: I often ran, like, to dad -He couldn't handle it at all but just got angry and -. . .So the strategy to run to dad, I kind of didn't use it that much, but I often called my mother at work and stuff but she couldn't get away.So you know -Interviewer: But she saw what happened?Or somehow acknowledged it, or she -? Mira: No.Not at all.Not at all.But it was more like that 'Oh, you're just tired.No problem'.And 'go -go to bed and sleep for a while'.

Discussion
Sibling violence is often described as a 'forgotten family violence' (Kiselica and Morrill-Richards, 2007).When we talk about violence in close relationships, we rarely think about siblings, although this is a very close and often long-term relation.Our explorative study uses qualitative data to contribute to a more detailed understanding of how this situation may be experienced.Our interviewees describe latent violence, where they were sensitive to the atmosphere in the room and the violent sibling's mood.Their behaviour was adapted to the perpetrator, but this is not the same as saying that they normalized the violence.Rather, the interviewees' behaviour was strategic, based on the specific situation, and the solutions they found also depended on this.In desperate situations, they might find ways of leaving temporarily or escaping in thought.Sometimes there was a possibility of escaping to the outdoors or to a relative or friend; in other cases, it was most reasonable to 'tip-toe' around the sibling, trying to make oneself invisible.However, our interviewees show both that they tried to make their vulnerability visible to adults, and that they used several strategies that should be understood as something more than so-called coping strategies.Indeed, Överlien and Hydén (2009) -as well as Alexander et al. (2016), Callaghan et al. (2016) and Katz (2022), among others -who have studied children's experiences of their fathers using violence against their mothers, argue that children's actions during violent events go beyond the use of coping strategies.As Överlien and Hydén (2009: s. 49) write, 'Turning on loud music, hiding, calling the police and even being fearful can all be seen as ways for a child to say: "I won't accept this", "I don't want this in my life"'.The same may be said about our interviewees: they actively resisted violence in the ways available to them.We argue that, as children, the interviewees opposed the violence, in the sense that they never accepted the violence or being a victim.The problem is that their voices as children were not heard and their strategies were not noticed or perceived as ways of avoiding their siblings.Or, the avoidance was seen as a consequence of normal sibling rivalry and quarrels.We do not see the interviewees' depictions of themselves as children living with an abusive sibling as normalizing the abuse.Many describe that they have had to break up with their sibling as adults, although in a few cases it has been possible to create a better relationship over the years.The violence was latent and clearly integrated, but did not become a normal part of their lives.It was not accepted by them, although it may have been normalized by other family members.As Överlien (2011: 492) argues: 'By listening to the resilient, we can learn that it is not until the ordinary is in place that there will be room not only to dream but also to heal'.Callaghan et al. (2016) emphasize that children and young people who experience family violence express a lack of trust in adults' response to their disclosures, and often feel that it is safer to keep quiet (see also Arai et al., 2021).They 'are neither passive nor silent' but value opportunities to talk about their experiences, although they are cautious and strategic in their decisions to do so.When it comes to victims of sibling violence, the disclosure (and trust) is even more challenging, as it is a kind of family violence, which is not recognized in society at large, nor even in the family.Our interviewees report that they tried to tell others but were not listened to, which is similar to the findings of other studies in the area (see, for example, Elliott et al., 2020).
Individuals, regardless of age, typically resist violence and use a variety of strategies (mental as well as behavioural) to prevent, withstand, stop, or oppose subjugation and its consequences (Anderson and Danis, 2006).This concept of resistance fits well with the feminist theoretical framework of domestic violence that views abuse by intimate partners as part of the systematic subjugation of women in society (Leone et al., 2007;Yllo, 1993).Attempts to stop an abuser's violence, or to protect oneself or one's children, can be viewed as acts of resistance, although these may be subtle in form.Women who appear to stay in violent relationships may have left their partners mentally, and be planning for the future, although still living with the abusers (Hydén, 2008).
The implications of this study are to urge researchers and practitioners working with young people who experience family violence to pay attention to children's own actions and their forms of resistance to being victimized.Children growing up with violent siblings cannot practically leave home more than temporarily, but they still do not submit to violence.Their strategies need to be explored to gain understanding of, and provide better support to, young people who are victims of sibling violence.This also means that we need to widen our perspective of family violence to include sibling violence, so that it does not stay normalized and silenced, leaving young people isolated with their experiences (Meyers, 2014).As our research, as well as others', reveals, various barriers exist that prevent the possibility to seek help when affected by sibling violence (see, for example, Meyers, 2014).Particularly, latent violence is difficult to notice, which means that we need to develop more effective, nuanced responses (Elliott et al., 2020).In our research on the views of professionals from social services and school counsellors about sibling violence, we have observed that explicit questions are not posed, and the very term sibling violence is avoided (Rypi, 2023).When it is noticed that young people avoid going home and always go to a friend's place, or are away from school for longer periods of time, or seem troubled or withdrawn, it might be an indication that they are using certain strategies to deal with latent sibling violence.However, it is also important that professionals are aware of the variety of children's experiences.Listening to children's own accounts is probably more effective than assuming that all children are affected similarly (Arai et al., 2021).This qualitative analysis is therefore beneficial, as it enables us to draw a more variegated, complex and nuanced picture of latent sibling violence, and is thus a unique contribution to a field that is quantitatively dominated.Furthermore, the concept of latent violence has mostly been used in social institutions dealing with intimate partner violence in Sweden, and only rarely used in research.We find it to be a useful and important concept, and look forward to seeing more studies of family violence in general, and sibling violence in particular, that apply latent violence as a concept to grasp the subtleties of violence and the many kinds of strategies used to deal with it.

ORCID iD
Veronika Burcar Alm https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4032-3395 on my toes, you could say.You understand what I mean?Interviewer: Yes, yes, I understand . . .Helena: You hear -you hear when someone is almost breathing or how someone is walking.So you hear the smallest little thing (Interviewer: Oh.)What mood is this person in?Can I do this?Can I not do this?Interviewer: Lovisa: