And then, experts say, they grow up to do exactly what they've seen modeled — girls become victims if their mothers were, and boys become aggressive and impulsive, developing inappropriate and violent treatment of women.

Experts say 70 percent of children who grow up in violent homes will end up in violent adult relationships. The National Violence Prevention Center says 70 percent of men in court-ordered treatment for domestic violence witnessed it as children.

"The children today are tomorrow's abusers and victims," says Sgt. Brock Hudson of the West Valley Police Department.

So everyone agrees, this cycle must stop.

But media coverage of national domestic violence data only confuses the severity of the problem.

"Domestic-Partner Violence in U.S. Fell Sharply," states a December 2006 headline in the Washington Post.

But the context is muddy. "'Domestic violence rates in the United States dropped sharply between 1993 and 2004 but showed recent signs of a rebound,' the Justice Department reported yesterday."

National data released this month by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics showed criminal violence against intimate partners has reached "a record low." Nonfatal attacks fell 65 percent from 1993 to 2005, according to data.

But national victim advocates dispute those facts. Victims who fear their abusers, one says, might deny the abuse to outsiders and pollsters.

In Utah, shelter staff and social workers say there is no decline. Rather, they say they're seeing more women and children than ever. They don't know whether having more clients challenges the decline or reflects less tolerance of domestic abuse.

The mixed message contributes to the public's seeming ambivalence to the problem. Because much of it goes unreported, it is difficult to assess how bad it is.

Domestic violence in Utah is getting worse, not better, according to the Governor's Violence Against Women and Families Cabinet Council.

"Domestic violence is so huge. Some days it feels like we're holding back the dam," says Rachelle Hill, West Valley City victim advocate. "Every day we don't have a homicide, I just breathe a sigh of relief."

And children are requiring more services, not fewer. There are myriad coalitions, task forces and scattered projects, but there is no bona fide champion for the cause.

State lawmakers aren't helping, critics say. The meager efforts that make their way to the Legislature get shot down in a hurry. State funding is stagnant.

But what may be most troubling is that children are tacitly ignored as victims in every scenario.