Yes. But when they've brought up in violent homes and it's all they've known and been modelled as how adult relationships work, it's as difficult as it is to educate the girls who grew up in violent homes.
And working with a number of young people who grew up in violent homes and are now replicating that in their early relationships; there's a really difficult balance to be found between educating a domestically violent 15/16/17 year old who is still legally a child and often in LAC or in a shitty abusive home that it is not at all acceptable that he behaves this way while also treating him as the traumatised child he is.
There are no specific psychoeducation programmes in my area for perpetrators of domestic/relationship violence under the age of 18. Because they're still children and should be treated as victims of their own trauma rather than perpetrators.
So everyone's stuck in trying to help them in a meaningful way. And once they turn 18 most of the support from agencies falls away. And when they're late teens and early 20s and beyond and still perpetrators of domestic violence, no-one in society really gives a shit anymore that they witnessed their Mum being beaten or raped. They're adults now and should know better.
And as dramatic as it sounds, its really possible that Alfie would have gone on to be an adult man like that, had he lived, given the household he was living in.
But when you are tragically murdered by abusive parents aged 9, everyone falls over themselves to weep about it.
But more boys like Alfie don't get murdered and in 10+ years are the adults like his 'Step'-Dad who murdered him. And then no-one gives a shit and says he was just an evil bastard.
And it goes round and round and round.
And there are always girls and women who come from equally dysfunctional and abusive backgrounds wanting to be in relationships with dysfunctional and abusive men. Because that's what they know to be how relationships work.