Daily Archives: March 17, 2015

‘Make It Happen’ program offers outlet for youths haunted by memories of violence

March 17, 2015 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Solutions, Trauma 3 Comments
Kenton Kirby (right), head of Make It Happen, smiles with colleague David Grant (left) and a youth in the program. Credit: Make It Happen

Kenton Kirby (right), head of Make It Happen, smiles with colleague David Grant (left) and a youth in the program. Credit: Make It Happen

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By Samuel Lieberman

NEW YORK — It was dismissal time. Everyone had left the classroom, but John Sadler had to run back to pick up his backpack.  Three of his classmates, boys who were constantly picking on Sadler, were blocking the door on his way out.

“What are you doing, are you stealing?” they asked.

Sadler, 13, knew they were trying to get a rise out of him. “I already knew what was going to happen,” he said.

The boys blocked his exit so he pushed them back forcefully with his stocky legs. He ran down the stairs but was no match for his swift pursuers.

“I got to the bottom of the steps and they jumped me right there,” Sadler said. “They were stomping on my knees, my ankles. They kicked me on my side.” Sadler limped to the shelter where he and his mother were staying.

His mother came to school the next day. “But I couldn’t tell them who did it,” he said. “‘Snitches get stitches’ they said, and I didn’t want that to be me.”

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Current juvenile justice system ‘designed to erode humanity’ says author

March 17, 2015 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Solutions Leave a comment
From left, Tynesha McHarris, director of community leadership at the Brooklyn Community Foundation, Renee Gregory, first assistant district attorney in the Brooklyn District Attorney's office, and Krista Larson, director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s Center for Youth Justice, and Nell Bernstein, author of Burning Down the House. Credit: Meral Agish

From left, Tynesha McHarris, director of community leadership at the Brooklyn Community Foundation, Renee Gregory, first assistant district attorney in the Brooklyn District Attorney’s office, and Krista Larson, director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s Center for Youth Justice, and Nell Bernstein, author of Burning Down the House. Credit: Meral Agish

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By Meral Agish

NEW YORK — When Nell Bernstein, the editor of a youth newspaper, looked at her staff, she saw bright young people at work. But in those years, the 1990s, some looked at those same faces and saw little more than a threat — and began to react with force.

Based on little other than appearance, these young people became victims of the “superpredator” theory. Bernstein described that as “a mythical creature with a hoodie and a black face, with no conscience, no spirit, no soul, who we were asked to believe lived in the bodies of our teenagers.”

Her staff members started getting arrested on their way to work. The arrests got so frequent that some quit, saving themselves from exposure to further targeting.

For Bernstein, seeing her young colleagues unfairly profiled in this way led her to act. In the decades since, juvenile justice reform has become a core theme in her investigative reporting.

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