It is a very big problem--and has been a problem ever since the 1950s--in Israel, with the vast influx of Jews from Middle Eastern countries where the father was an absolute patriarch and suddenly the children are "the bosses" in the household. It upsets the entire social balance. And if it is a girl who acts as translator and go-between! Oy! The shame of it. BTW, the mothers are too busy with the house and raising the children (and in Moslem cultures, often actively discouraged from going outside the home) to learn the language. But the father might have been unwilling to answer questions, and so he used the girl who could claim to be ignorant of the reasons why he was beaten.