Monthly Archives: September 2016

False confessions make it harder to establish innocence for alleged juvenile offenders

September 30, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Community prevention programs, Solutions 1 Comment

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Barry Krisberg

By Barry Krisberg

The national media has widely reported the story of Brendan Dassey, whose murder and sexual assault convictions were reversed by a federal court in Milwaukee on Aug. 12; he had served nearly nine years in prison. He was ordered released unless prosecutors wanted to file a new charge.

Dassey, who was 16 at the time of his arrest, was a central figure in a very popular Netflix documentary — “Making a Murderer.” The court found that the youth was mentally unfit and was coerced into confessing his involvement in the crime by false promises by investigators. The court held that his confession was involuntary under the Fifth and Fourteenth amendments. His lawyer had not challenged the propriety of the confession.

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We must decriminalize trauma for girls with histories of abuse or neglect

September 25, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma 4 Comments

Desi-SmithBy Neha Desai and Dr. Allison Briscoe-Smith 

Girls’ involvement in the juvenile justice system is growing disproportionately at a time when arrest rates for boys are declining. And yet, girls’ behavior has not changed; rather, our response to their behavior has changed. This is especially true for girls in the child welfare system.

Much has been written recently about the “pathways” that lead youth, especially girls of color, from histories of childhood abuse and/or neglect to involvement with the juvenile justice system. We are starting to better understand the ways in which childhood exposure to trauma can lead to survival strategies and behaviors that are criminalized, while child welfare system involvement can exacerbate underlying trauma and result in law enforcement contact for youth who otherwise would have had none.

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Assisting refugees: Lessons on trauma and resilience

September 22, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Resilience, Trauma Leave a comment
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Lao wedding in the U.S.

Making do with what you’ve got

 There are a lot of stories about refugees in the news. Some years ago, I helped resettle refugees from the Vietnam War. Trauma and resilience define what it means to be a refugee. All of them had lived through years of warfare. They had seen friends and family members killed. They had to flee the familiar towns and villages they had lived in all their lives. They arrived in a new country with hardly any resources, in a land where nobody spoke their language or understood their customs. Could you do that?

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What does trauma-informed mean to foster youth?

September 20, 2016 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child abuse, Child trauma, Solutions Leave a comment

Alisa 2015 Headshot

Alisa Santucci

By Alisa Santucci

For three decades, I have listened in awe to the brave voices of children, youth and families who have shared, in anguish, their past experiences — experiences that anyone would objectively call “adverse” and ones that can have lasting effects on health and well-being.

The seminal CDC-Kaiser Permanente Adverse Childhood Experiences Study opened my eyes to how pervasive their stories were and how these findings might influence the development of effective interventions and treatment, especially for system-involved young people.

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Too young to say ‘I do’

September 19, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child abuse, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Solutions Leave a comment
Fraidy Reiss, founder of Unchained at Last in New Jersey. Photo: Unchained at Last

Fraidy Reiss, founder of Unchained at Last

by Christie Renick, ChronicleofSocialChange.org

This summer, Virginia lawmakers passed a law preventing anyone under the age of 16 from marrying in the state.

Some would call this progress, but advocates fighting to end child marriage in the United States see it as a sobering reminder that adults can legally marry children in all 50 states.

According to the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), child marriage is “perhaps the most prevalent form of sexual abuse and exploitation of girls,” and “marriage before the age of 18 is a fundamental violation of human rights.”

Fraidy Reiss is the founder of Unchained at Last, a nonprofit that helps women and girls leave or avoid forced marriages, and advocates to end the practice of child marriage. She lived in an arranged marriage for more than a decade.

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8 ways people recover from post childhood adversity syndrome

September 18, 2016 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Chronic disease, Solutions, Trauma 37 Comments

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Cutting-edge research tells us that experiencing childhood emotional trauma can play a large role in whether we develop physical disease in adulthood. In Part 1 of this series we looked at the growing scientific link between childhood adversity and adult physical disease. This research tells us that what doesn’t kill you doesn’t necessarily make you stronger; far more often, the opposite is true.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)—which include emotional or physical neglect; verbal humiliation; growing up with a family member who is addicted to alcohol or some other other substance, or who is depressed or has other mental illness; and parental abandonment, divorce, or loss — can harm developing brains, predisposing them to autoimmune disease, heart disease, cancer, depression, and a number of other chronic conditions, decades after the trauma took place.

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Trauma-informed Uber?

September 14, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Solutions, Trauma 3 Comments

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By Jeremy Loudenback, ChronicleOfSocialChange.org

As Los Angeles County mulls the idea of using ride-sharing services to escort foster youth to visitations with biological parents, some child-welfare experts wonder how such a service would be able to grapple with children with significant experiences of trauma and loss.

Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors members Sheila Kuehl and Mike Antonovich submitted a motion last week calling for improved family visitation, including the idea of exploring whether ride-sharing companies like Uber, Lyft or HopSkipDrive could transport children and family members to important family visits.

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We need to understand how to provide trauma-informed care

September 12, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Solutions, Trauma 4 Comments

 

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Beverly Tobiason, clinical director, Pima County (AZ) Juvenile Court Center

By Beverly Tobiason

The philosophy of trauma-informed care is becoming more and more embedded in the philosophies and practices of child-serving agencies.

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Teens lead way in teaching Camden, NJ, about ACEs and resilience

September 9, 2016 By in Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Community prevention programs, Resilience, Solutions 4 Comments
Hopeworks teens lead a workshop about ACEs science

Hopeworks teens lead a workshop about ACEs science

 

Two volunteers race against the clock to stack red Solo cups into the highest tower they can manage.

Queenie Smith keeps knocking them down.

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7 ways childhood adversity changes a child’s brain

September 8, 2016 By in ACE Study, Adverse childhood experiences, Child trauma, Chronic disease, Epigenetics, Trauma 29 Comments

 

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If you’ve ever wondered why you’ve been struggling a little too hard for a little too long with chronic emotional and physical health conditions that just won’t abate, or feeling as if you’ve been swimming against some invisible current that never ceases, a new field of scientific research may offer hope, answers, and healing insights.
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