Let's Get Honest! Absolutely Uncommon Analysis of Family & Conciliation Courts' Operations, Practices, & History

(I initially had a page for the Dugard case.  See also “It was my police intuition kicking in”)

Jaycee Dugard: ‘Why I Could Not Escape Abduction’

By Nichole Dossous | Christian Post Contributor

Jaycee Dugard has said she could not dream of escaping her abduction ordeal because she was so badly manipulated.

Dugard was kidnapped at the age of 11 and kept in captivity for 18 years where she was repeatedly raped, handcuffed, and gave birth to two girls.

Dugard, now 31, explained why she could not escape the ordeal to ABC News during an interview Sunday, “I’ve asked myself that question many times. I know there was no leaving. The mind manipulation plus the physical abuse I suffered in the beginning, there was no leaving.”

During Sunday’s interview, Jaycee told ABC how she survived the ordeal of being initially raped with the threat of a stun gun until it and the use of handcuffs were no longer needed to keep her from leaving.

“There’s a switch that I had to shut off,” she said. “I mean, I can’t imagine being beaten to death, you know? And you can’t imagine being kidnapped and raped, you know? So, it’s just, you just do what you have to do to survive.”

Commonly called “Dissociation,” a survival technique.

The ABC interview with Diane Sawyer on Sunday captured almost 15 million viewers. Dugard used the interview to tell of her life with Garrido and his wife Nancy, saying he would tell her the outside world was dangerous, filled with pedophiles and rapists.

Dugard also wemt on to share how after the birth of her daughters she felt like she “wasn’t alone anymore.”

Garrido was sentenced to life in prison for kidnapping and multiple counts of sexual assault. Nancy, his wife, was sentenced to 36 years.

Dugard’s family, through a state victim’s compensation fund, received a $20 million settlement. During the interview with Sawyer, Dugard said that she was not full of rage toward Garrido: “I refuse to let him have that. He can’t have me.”

Dugard has a memoir coming out on Tuesday titled A Stolen Life. In her memoir, she shares how though it was painful to think about her mother, she never forgot about her and that on her mother’s birthday each year, she allowed herself to think of her.

She has written a full account of the 18-year ordeal in her book to show others how to survive tragedy.

Other excerpts, linked to the same article:

2) Although many people view Dugard’s story as a tragedy, the 31 year old views herself as an overcomer, and writes about her life changing ordeal from the perspective of a fighter. In the book’s promotional materials she writes: “I don’t think of myself as a victim. I survived.”

…

She explained how Phillip laughed as they drove away with her, telling his wife: “I can’t believe we got away with it.”

Dugard explained: “It was like the most horrible moment of your life x10.”

Going into intimate detail, Dugard then told ABC News how she tried hard not to cry, because they had tied her hands behind her back and she wouldn’t be able to wipe away her tears to stop them from irritating her face.

Her first child arrived when she was just 14 years old. She described: “I didn’t know I was in labor. Then I saw her. She was beautiful. I felt like I wasn’t alone anymore. I had somebody that was mine … And I knew I could never let anything happen to her.”

Dugard also told how she cried regularly when she would think about her mother and how she worried whether her mother would forget what she looked like or sounded like.

Also, Jessica Hopper article, from ABCNEWS.com:

Dugard lived in virtual solitary confinement until her first daughter was born three years into captivity and wasn’t allowed to spend time outdoors until after her second daughter was born, more than six years after her abduction.

She writes that the closest thing to freedom she ever felt in the compound was when she was allowed to live in her own tent and plant a small garden.

– – – – – – –

Just for the record, Jaycee was not rescued by someone from the county she was imprisoned in — but by an alert FEMALE cop on the UC Berkeley Campus, and because her rapist/captor — got boastful, and a little careless.  He wanted to proslytize on campus and needed permits (as I recall).

When she’d been properly trained and apparently “broken” — then she could have a little more freedom.

This woman — mother — survivor — writer — had many “Adverse Childhood Experiences” — per the “ACE Study.”  Notice the first two listed:

http://acestudy.org/

1. Recurrent physical abuse
   
2. Recurrent emotional abuse
   
3. Contact sexual abuse

But I’m going to bet she’ll thrive.  She has her kids now — and the truth of her story is coming out.  Her horrible captors and rapists ARE in jail, and the public has acknowledged it.

A SECTION ABOUT DISSOCIATION AND THE (STOCKHOLM SYNDROME :

(2009 writings from a trauma therapist, blog, responding to the Jaycee Dugard case):

Discussing Dissociation

Last night, I saw another television documentary on Jaycee Lee Dugard – the young woman who was kidnapped at age 11, held captive for 18 years, and found alive, along with her two daughters on August 26, 2009.

Jaycee is now 29 years old.

Jaycee spent the past 18 years held captive in the backyard of a registered, violent sex offender, Phillip Garrido.  Garrido fathered Jaycee’s two daughters, and has been charged with numerous criminal offenses.

While most of the world was thrilled to see Garrido arrested and locked away into police custody, Jaycee and her girls had different emotional reactions.  Initially, when questioned by the authorities, Jaycee was supportive of Garrido, she refused to admit her real identity, and when the facts weren’t adding up, she claimed to be hiding from a fictitious abusive husband that lived in another state.  She had chances to tell about her perpetrator, but her first responses were to protect him.  Her two daughters cried when they heard Garrido was arrested.

Garrido spent years torturing these young women, but yet they were clearly connected to him.

How can this be?

This dynamic is called Stockholm Syndrome.  It is when victims form positive, caring attachments with their violent perpetrators.  The more victims have to depend on their perpetrators for their very survival, the more likely the victim will form an attachment to their perpetrator.

The world has been appalled as they heard this story.

 

But this story is not a new story.  {{What’s new:  They got out, she saw her captors sent to prison)

 

This story happens to many children every day of the year.

Many dissociative trauma survivors have lived a life all too similar to the life that Jaycee lived while with Garrido.  As children, most dissociative trauma survivors lived – day after day, year after year – under the strict sadistic control of a sex offender.  They were repeatedly sexually abused, many became pregnant, they were given hidden identities and new names, and they were taught bizarre religious beliefs.  Many DID survivors were locked and confined in unhealthy places, made to be completely dependent upon their abusers, and the reality of their daily abuse was hidden from the neighbors.  It is not at all uncommon for DID survivors to have been sexually involved and sexually controlled by their perpetrators well into their adulthood.

The main difference between most DID Survivors and Jaycee Dugard is that most DID survivors were not kidnapped by a stranger.  Most DID survivors who have lived this kind of ongoing abuse were simply living in their family homes.

These DID survivors were being raised by their father and mother.  They didn’t have the hope that someday they would be rescued and returned to their “real family”.  They were with their real family.

To the two daughters, that was their real family.  However, their mother knew better, she remembered her family of origin:

In either situation, the child-victims learned to adapt to the sadistic behaviors of the abusive parental figures in order to survive.  Despite the extreme abuse, they learned to depend on the abusers.  Everything from breathing, food, clothing, water, shelter, warmth, education, medical attention, etc. was controlled and monitored by their abusers.  There was no personal space.  There was no way to get away.  There was no known place to run to even if they had gotten away.

The child-victims knew they were stuck there.

They knew that their life and basic survival needs were completely dependent upon keeping the perpetrator happy.

The key in Jaycee’s case seemed to be when she realized she was safe.

THINK ABOUT THIS:

Abuse and intimidation and restraint is STRONGEST at the beginning, until the victim is psychologically dominated or at least submissive in behavior.  Can YOU imagine being 11, stun-gunned, handcuffed, raped, and lied to repeatedly?  And told that outside are pedophiles and rapists?  (NOTE:  listen to what abusers say.  They are often a personal narrative of what they have been doing!)

WHEN a COURT orders a custody switch and allows (or orders) COMPLETE separation from the other parent, especially if it’s the non-abusive parent, how does this affect the children?   How does it necessarily affect the other parent?

Domestic violence of an adult is not a “child” situation but has parallels — because the adult is being treated as a child (only harshly, controlling — no one should treat kids like that, either) and it’s physical emotional economic psychological AND “faking it” for the rest of the world.

When I filed for my restraining order — and when others did, I know this — they were only interested in the most RECENT overt acts of violence, they meant physical violence.  Well . .. . the situation had gone on for years, and some of us got smarter during that time period!   Although it had been escalating and there were threats to kill, casual and serious, and weapons, and indeed a fear of being murdered (and being a mother!) was indeed what finally prompted me to make the break — I was ONLY able to do this after I had a brief time of safety and distance from the abuse.  It was VERY brief, but it was enough for my mind to comprehened — I was not a terrible person, and still had some ability to function well when the abuser was not near at hand and threatening.

I then returned, with children, to this household and witnessed his reaction — he was retaliatory, had to “up” the level of control and get even — for having let me out for just a few weeks from his control.  The punishment was pretty severe and a definite step-up, escalation from beforehand.  Having just a SHORT period of time standing somewhere else (i.e., among people who were respectful, non-accusatory, non-patronizing, just being LEFT ALONE to live life for a bit ) the contrast became very clear.  No way was I going to hang around for another year.

It still wasn’t easy to get the legal paperwork going, because in the court’s mind, I was told, where’s the blood, where’s the broken bones?

Speaking of dissociation–guess what — there HAD been a severe incident, qualifying as felony-level, and it had knocked some teeth lose, several of them, accompanied by anger; it was retaliation — something I’d never experienced in life before.  But my mind, while writing up the declaration (difficult, the prosepct of challenging one’s controller) — had blanked that one out!  I realized it quickly after, and added it (in time for the declaration) but was amazed.  I know that if I, as a fairly strong adult, had those issues, I cannot imagine what children who have been felony-kidnapped might feel.  How would their minds handle the same thing?

NOW picture this:  Not Jaycee’s case, where she is completely missing in action for years — but a parental case, where the child has just been custody-switched by some “AFCC operatives” (as I now call them — see below for some demonstrationof how it’s done) and they are hauled in front of one professional or another and evaluated — how do you think they are going to behave?  Are they ALWAYS going to say, I’d rather be with the other parent?  When the court just showed how capricious it could be?  Are they going to ALWAYS be able to really report what’s going on in the new home and environment?  And does the court really give a damn, if no more funds for itself are involved?  (I’ll leave that last question hanging……..)

In case you can’t guess:

This case brings up traumatic memories for me, and I am not best qualified to write much on it.  I”m not Terry Probyn, but I know it is traumatic to be suddenly and illegally separated from one’s kids, and then the separation continues.  Most of all, the betrayal of justice….  To be coming again and again into the courtroom and narrating the truth in front of judges in the same buildings that (each time) may have resulted in worse losses — can have a cumulative effect.

Now that Jaycee is SAFE — because her oppressors are indeed in jail and this time not getting out — she is quite ready to face down and stare down all the bad stuff and write bravely about it.  She knows she is  survivor, even though her childhood was stolen.

I am most touched by how she couldn’t think of her mother except once a year, on the mother’s birthday.  That is very understandable.  I hope my kids do the same thing, perhaps.   

I will not dig up the past articles on the Garridos and Dugards when she and the girls were first rescued, except to note that she COULD”VE been rescued earlier and some neighbors tried to report that there were people living in the backyard.   However, the local police and district attorneys around here are embroiled in their own politics and infighting, including one being tried for sexual assault of a female co-worker; another time the county prosecutor punched someone else in the face in an office (or vice versa, I forget which) and recently there are accusations against law enforcement that mean, the Feds are being brought in, and the local District Attorney dismissed 15 cases involved with the people accused (a 34-count criminal complaint):

According to attorneys on the case, Wielsch allegedly stole drugs from law enforcement evidence lockers and Butler arranged to sell them or have them sold.

Charges against Tanabe were added to the complaint Friday. He was arraigned in Contra Costa County Superior Court this afternoon on three counts of conspiracy – conspiracy to sell steroids, conspiracy to obstruct justice and conspiracy to falsely arrest; one count of accepting a bribe; and three counts involving an assault weapon, Peterson said.

AND:

Feds Take Over Contra Costa police probe

June 04, 2011|By Justin Berton, Chronicle Staff Writer

(06-03) 19:09 PDT MARTINEZ — The FBI has taken over the investigation into a widening police scandal in Contra Costa County that has already led to the arrests of three law enforcement officers and has authorities looking into allegations that one of the men was running a brothel, officials said Friday.

District Attorney Mark Peterson said his office’s budget and staffing had been stretched thin by a five-month probe that has grown to cover “multiple cities and counties, multiple police officers, multiple police agencies, and has crossed state lines.”

Peterson said “threats” had arisen as Contra Costa law enforcement agencies pursued the investigation, but he would not elaborate.

On an aside, the current D.A. was a close run-off, with Dan O’Malley. Concord Police Officer’s Association voted for Mark Peterson, and noted that O’Malley was speaking out of both sides of his mouth — protecting victims, and referring to criminal defense for those accused of abuse: (See the summary pasted into the link).

More to the point (from my point of view — see posts on the Family Justice Center Alliance — the opponent, Dan O’Malley is sister to the neighboring county’s district attorney, Nancy O’Malley).  I guess they are the fighting Irish, and a whole lot of them involved in the legal/judicial systems:

Dan O’Malley (Judge Ret.) was born and raised in the East Bay. He comes from a family of eleven, all of whom settled in the Bay Area.  He has been practicing law for the past 22 years, both as a Litigator and a Judge. Many of his family members are involved in the practice of law. His father, Bill O’Malley was the elected District Attorney, a Superior Court Judge and a Public Defender. His sister Nancy is the Chief Assistant District Attorney for Alameda County. His wife, Judge MaryAnn O’Malley is a former Deputy District Attorney and now a Judge with the Contra Costa County Superior Court. The couple was recently featured in Diablo Magazine as one of the East Bays’ Power Couples.

AND with all that powerhouse of O’Malleys in the neighborhood, it took a lowly female cop from UC Berkeley to notice that Phillip Garrido’s kids were looking a little squirmy, and because she acted on her gut instincts, Jaycee and her two children got out.

– – – – – – — – – – – –    With all the other politicking and (moonlighting) business these guys have going on among themselves I can see why there might’ve been a slip-up in catching Garrido earlier.  

I’d like to add a few notes — but not much more. First of all, the county this young woman was in has “ZERO TOLERANCE FOR DOMESTIC VIOLENCE.”  Of course this wasn’t “domestic violence” – because the Garridos were not related to their abductee.  However, once children were born, then technically, Phil Garrido was.  For one, Jaycee’s daughters had been living the lie that their mother was actually their sister.  Here’s a website showing how many, many projects are stopping rape, domestic violence, battering, and such, in this county.  I’m sure they are making a difference.  However, the headlines show that there are still murders and suicidies taking place in context of custody matters in this county.  And the shocking gang-rape of a 15? year old after a homecoming dance, although she had a father in her life (Richmond, California).

http://contracostazt.org/projects.php  (OVW list of FY2010 grants, good browsing, too):

Notice the first thing up is Supervised Visitation

:

Supervised Visitation:

This program is a collaborative of the Superior Court of California, STAND! Against Domestic Violence, Community Violence Solutions, Familias Unidas, the Contra Costa County Probation Department, and the Richmond and San Pablo Police Departments. The program is a multi-faceted approach to supervised visitation and safe exchange between underserved non-custodial parents and their children while also preserving victim and child safety. The program model addresses the dynamics and complexities of power, control, intimidation and violence that is specific to family abuse cases. The program model also includes the development of parenting groups that are attentive to domestic violence, its relationship to parenting and children exposed to domestic violence.

I have something to say about this.

“Bullshit.”

Not to belabor the point, but now mothers who have been battered or are seeking to do something about abuse of their children (by the father, in context of a custody matter) are themselves being assigned supervised visitation as punishment/retaliation, and that’s been going on for years.  Supervised Visitation is a compromise with the fathers’ rights (to access and visitation, right?) groups which otherwise would’ve had batterers simply LOSING the right to come near their kids, or perps near those they had molested.   In this county — where Jaycee Dugard spent 18 years in the encampments backyard unincorporated Antioch — while Garrido was on probation, and even for a short time while he was in jail — and during this time, another inappropriate supervised visitation monitor made some headlines:

2007 Welsh v. Tippe case:

“Child Visitation Supervisor Involved in Beastiality (sic) and Master Slave Sex,” by Virginia McCullough

I think usually it doesn’t get that bad.  Most times, the issue is simple embezzlement, as in the Viola Stroud matter (Dutchess County, NY, Genia Shockome).

Incidentally, the Welsh v. Tippe case is classic custody-switching justified by supervised visitation supervisor:

The Family Law Court plotters certainly had their own agenda in the Welsh v. Tippie case and it had absolutely nothing to do with “the best interest of the child”.  It had everything to do with the twisted motives of the co-conspirators appointed and employed the courts.

The evidence shows that one of Commissioner Josanna Berkow’s first acts was to reject the 50/50 shared parentage plan originally promoted by county employed mediator Vicki McReynolds following a mediation meeting between the parents on February 4, 2005.

Father Brian Tippie had employed attorney Lisa Gilmore of Whiting Fallon & Ross on or about January 25, 2005 ….  Gilmore had filed papers two days prior to the mediation meeting that stated that Brian was concerned that mother Joyce was unstable and unable to properly care for the three children at this time. Commissioner Berkow reacted swiftly and 10 working days after the first mediator Vicki McReynolds submitted her recommendations, Berkow rejected that report.  On February 22, 2005 Berkow appointed Karen Hobbs Ph.D. as custody evaluator “to assess the mental health of the parties with respect to {(alleged)} suicide threats”.  Total control to determine the mental health of the parties rests now with Ms. Hobbs as stated in the order: ” Psychological testing only as the evaluator deems necessary”.

If you’re personally unfamiliar with the process, here it is again in (I think) chrono order:

• Jan 25 father hires a certain attorney
• February 2nd, within a SHORT period, Father files he is “concerned” mother is unable to care for the children.
• February 4th, mediation — Court Mediator Vicky McReynolds recommends shared parenting, 50/50
• February 22nd?, Berkow switches out McReynolds for what I’d call a crony, Hobbs, upping from mediator to custody evaluator (note pay differential.  This custody evaluator will not be a court employee….)
• Shortly after, Father meets with Berkow’s appointee, Hobbs and suggests who would be a good supervised visitation monitor.
• His choice happens to be the woman into bestiality and master/slave (she’s the slave) stuff.
• by May 19 (2005) Custody has been switched to the father, on the recommendation of the supervised visitation monitor:

During my conversation with you, I explained the following: The Program Director for the federal Access to Visitation grant, Helen O. Page, represents my ex-husband in my private family law matter 98 FL 0084, and continued to do so through all of the dates inclusive, in which the Court was accessing A/V funds through this program. I have obtained records from the county auditor, as well as from the Court, in the form of payment vouchers, the grant application, and the grant contract. **These documents declare that that the intent of the A/V program is to “encourage contact between children and both parents,” to “facilitate contact between non-custodial supervised parents and children” with a criteria for a “step-down” in supervised visitation.

Through (Helen O.) Page’s litigation for her private client, my ex-husband, I have been continually ordered to “therapeutic” supervised visitation. The A/V contract specifies that therapeutic supervised visitation is for persons who have been convicted of domestic violence or child abuse statutes. I have never been accused, charged or convicted of anything. Page’s purpose in representing her private client to keep me on therapeutic supervised visitation is to obstruct contact between the children and I by limiting the available persons that could do visitation monitoring, and also by hopefully making visitation cost prohibitive. Page argued in court for her private client that if I couldn’t afford to pay for therapeutic supervised visitation, I should “get a second job.“My investigation of records revealed that $6200.00 was paid to a winery out of A/V funds for “supervised visitation training” in Nov. of 1998. An additional $2500.00 was paid to Marsha Nohl and her separate visitation business, A.F.T.E.R. for this same “training.” However, when I requested supervised visitation services in Jan. 99 and March 99, Page declared in court that I could not be provided services because there was no supervised visitation program in Amador County.

The contract between Amador County Superior Court and Judicial Council {{She was smart, and got her hands on that contract}} for the A/V funds states that a supervised visitation program was to be operative by Jan. 99. How is it legitimate to spend over $8,5000.00 for supervised visitation training for a non-existent program? Failing to have a program in place by Jan. 99 violates the A/V contract.

Furthermore, an attendee of the supervised visitation training declared to me that different programs were presented and that the A.F.T.E.R. program was tremendously more expensive that the other program presented. So why was A.F.T.E.R. chosen as the sub-contractor for the A/V grant, and why were their supervised visitation rules, which exceed the standards set by the Judicial Council with wholly unconstitutional parameters, determined to be the standard for the A/V program? I could prove quite readily with audio tapes of supervised visitations at A.F.T.E.R that their rules, as implemented, are punitive and suppressive to any normalcy in a relationship between parent and child, thus violating the entire intent of the A/V program, which is to encourage positive relationships between children and non-custodial parents.

• In August 1996, the Rhode Island Juvenile Officers Association, a non-profit group of current and retired juvenile police officers who fight juvenile crime and delinquency, began leasing space in the building owned by Judge Jeremiah.   Originally, the group sublet its first-floor quarters to William F. Holt, a lawyer who leased the two-story office building from Jeremiah and had an office there. When Holt later moved out, the association began paying rent directly to Judge Jeremiah.

That alone would concern me, but there’s more….

• In January 1997, Judge Jeremiah and 13 other member of an advisory panel to the Governor’s Justice Commission voted unanimously to give a $56,000.00 federal grant to the association. Judge Jeremiah seconded the vote.
• Tammelleo [the ethics commission prosecutor] said in her 64 pages of findings and exhibits that Judge Jeremiah voted even though the association’s grant proposal “clearly indicated” it occupied part of his building and the grant included a $6,000.00 line item for rent in 1997.
• In addition, Tammelleo said, the Governor’s Justice Commission had previously gotten an opinion from the Ethics Commission advising members to recuse themselves from matters involving business associates.

And the 3rd complaint on this judge involves sending a 14 yr old girl to a 3-day “Training Camp” without a hearing.  The ACLU got involved in that one.  As I recall, same state, the ACLU also got involved in a family court judge who attempted to Gag a  mother from talking about her case, as well.

http://www.projo.com/news/content/JEREMIAH_CRITICIZED_SUPREME_COUR_06-11-10_E4I_v16.175fcd6.html

Interesting judge:  (hover on cursor or click to read the whole story) — at age 74, in 2010 only, he retired — apparently his entire career was in the family law system.  “As chief judge, Jeremiah said he was proud of establishing the Juvenile Drug Court, Family Treatment Drug Court, Re-Entry Court, the Mental Health Court Clinic and a separate domestic violence calendar.He said his retirement has nothing to do with a class-action suit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union this week that charges the Truancy Court with violating the constitutional rights of children and their parents.

Jeremiah acknowledged that his physical problems have slowed him down. …”

The “NCJFCJ” has him as Judge of the Year in 2005 Blogger “randijames.com” in “The List” has him as a PAS-promoter.

(His replacement,Haiganush R. Bedrosian the “Rhode Island Family Court Chief Judge” lists AFCC among his associations, see the fine print….)

In 2004, Warwick police charged a Family Court deputy sheriff with felony domestic violence when they found his girlfriend handcuffed in their kitchen with a broken jaw and eye socket. Already entrenched in litigation, the deputy sheriff was an often-unruly defendant in the same courtroom where he once kept order. He demanded custody of his ten-year-old daughter, who was terrified of him.In the corridor during a break, David M. Tassoni, assistant to Chief Judge Jeremiah S. Jeremiah, Jr., told me he was searching for a psychologist who “understood parental alienation.” Tassoni found Lori Meyerson, PhD, in a cramped country office and invited her to serve at Family Court, where she testified that the deputy sheriff was a “happy, calm and level person.” She had never visited either parent’s home when she recommended giving the father sole custody. General Magistrate John J. O’Brien, Jr., praised Meyerson’s work and declared this case to be “as close as you can get to parental alienation.”

Tassoni told me he was working with Judge Bedrosian and a joint committee from the Court and the Bar Association on a training program to qualify guardians ad litem. Their 2004 course and manual devoted an entire section to Gardner’s theory of parental alienation.

(And, apparently Tassoni — a mediator who is paid $105,000/year (public funds?) and also serving as an administrator for this judge, had falisfied his educational CV).  The article is by “Anne Grant” per the URL.

ARTICLE:  “SHOCK AND AWE:  HOW CHILD ABUSE AND DISSOCIATION DROVE VIOLENT CRIME“

makes some good points:

by Abby Stein, Ph.D.

---

“But if you speak with these killers about their childhoods, or read their case files, you will not feel the need to consult the human genome project about the causes of their violence. The scenarios are all there in the offender’s early biography. — The author I gave this paper as a presentation at the 2008 International Association for Psychohistory Convention. A funny thing happened on the way to the podium. My presentation, originally submitted with the title “How Child Abuse and Dissociation Drive Violent Crime” was misprinted in the original mailing as “Child Abuse, Dissociation, Shock and Awe.” Of course, I called to notify the appropriate authorities of the mistake and make sure it was fixed in subsequent mailings.Following my initial reaction, I started to think–wait a minute–Freud (1960) said there are no accidents. I wondered if “Shock and Awe” might indeed be a better title for a presentation about child abuse and criminal violence than the one I had originally intended.”Shock and Awe” is best known as a modern military doctrine. Most of us became aware of it during the carpet bombing of Baghdad in 2003. The real name of the battle plan was “rapid dominance” (Ullman, Wade, & Edney, 1996). But it has come to be known as “Shock and Awe” because the purpose of that type of attack is not really to take physical control of a country. “Shock and Awe” demonstrates the massivepsychological power you wield over a people. These campaigns are spectacular displays of force that paralyze the senses, destroy perceptive capacities, colonize the mind, demolish the will and, as we have seen in Iraq, lay the groundwork for future violence.Honestly, I cannot really think of a better way to describe the ongoing effects of child abuse. So consider this a presentation about Shock and Awe campaigns that happen in the home. And about the devastating collateral damage such tactics cause in all our lives.On a fateful day at Bellevue Hospital many years ago I met my first murderer. I remember mainly that the man asked to be sedated and manacled to a chair because he feared he might hurt someone on the psychiatric team. Somewhere during the interview he recalled being tied to a tree for punishment when he was little and, oh yes, having learned his multiplication tables with his father’s pistol cocked to his head. In my naivete, I was sure I was seeing someone with a uniquely shocking story, a statistical outlier, an extreme case. Or–as the forensic staff would constantly insinuate–maybe the man was just an outright liar, an evil seed malingering a terrible past to avoid paying for his crime.Such moral ambiguity concerned the psychiatric team not at all. Because the Supreme Court (Dusky v. US, 362 U.S. 402 1960) has offered only vague outlines for what constitutes incapacity to stand trial, for all practical purposes if the defendant isn’t completely unmoored from reality he is usually considered competent to proceed. And so we sent him back to the jail cell that he came from. I went back to where I had come from-two floors above the prison-on the child and adolescent ward. There, I was training to perform abuse and neglect evaluations of children.It was holding this lucky combination of jobs-screening abused children and adult criminals at the same time–that gave me a unique vantage point from which to view the transgenerational transmission of violence. Of course, we have known for years that violence in the home foreshadows violence in the streets, but we have lacked a compelling theory for exactly how that happens.

STORIES THEY MAKE UP TO EXPLAIN THEIR FAMILY HOMES:

Invariably, the children I interviewed insisted that their injuries were self-inflicted, even when the wounds occurred in impossible to reach places. “I sat on the radiator by accident”, is how the kids would explain striations on their buttocks. “I fell out of bed” was the mantra recited to explain broken arms, missing teeth, concussions, and black eyes. Kids even swore that they themselves had provoked sexual abuse–by curling up in an adult’s lap, by disrobing before a bath, or by asking to be tucked in at bedtime.

No one ever blamed their caretakers. Quite the contrary. One 15 year old girl told me that her mother–who had been manually examining her to make sure her hymen was intact since the age of four-was doing it “because she loves me so much, and just wants to make sure I’m not raped by my step-dad, like she was by hers”.

On the prison ward, I was learning that these preposterous self-blaming narratives only hardened with age. Men told me that they were only beaten as children because they were “too black” (for punishment, this man’s father would leave him in the closet for the KKK), or as one guy told me “I was only beaten for doing something really bad…like not eating.”

When I asked another man on the prison ward about the origins of an old burn mark on his arm, he explained perfunctorily, “Oh, that’s abrand–all babies got to get it to keep from being stolen.” Maybe that’s what he was told, or maybe that’s the story he made up to explain why his parents put their cigarettes out on him. In his magical narrative, being burned becomes a kind of security; a proof of his parents love. His scar becomes a talisman against separation or abandonment (Stein, 2007).

I heard this Orwellian conflation of perpetrator and victim again and again in the stories of adult offenders. One man told me his 4 year old daughter had seduced him, a narrative originally formed to exonerate the parents who had used him for their own sexual pleasure when he was small. Caesar Rodriguez, who beat his 7 year old stepdaughter Nixmarie Brown to death after weeks of torture, said that he had only been protecting his family, and contemplated entering his “World’s Greatest Dad” coffee mug into evidence at the murder trial (Shifrel & Conner, 2008). John Atchison, a former State prosecutor, wrote in an FBI affidavit after his arrest that he was “always gentle and loving” when he had sex with five-yearolds (Bunkley, 2007). Dennis Rader, better known by his nickname “BTK”, which stands for his modus operandi: bind, torture, kill, said at his trial that he hoped to be reunited with his victims in the afterlife (Wilgoren, 2005). He felt that much “bonded” (his word) to them (Dateline/NBC, 2005).

I have come to believe that these stories of complicit victims and loving predators are not mere rationalizations, excuses to the police when one is caught with their pants down. I am convinced instead that they are deeply believed in imaginings, culled from one’s own childhood nightmares about what constitutes love, caring, and attachment.

I think about it this way: a violent crime is a kind of dissociated enactment.During early, intense, and repetitive trauma, there is an adaptive disengagement: a dissociation from any meaningful assessment of fear, or pain, or horror. Because to be fully present for it–and to process its implications-would quite simply overwhelm the brain.

Finally, a book that challenges conventional “wisdom” about healing from emotionally destructive traumas and abuse. Simply put, you can’t think your way to happiness if you’ve suffered injuries as a child or youth. Yet every day, millions of adult Americans who suffer from emotionally devastating mistreatment at the hands of family members, friends, acquaintances…more

It tells the story of her work with a young woman who had horrible abuse by her brothers and friends growing up, how she turned to drugs, and suicidal behavior to try to get free from it, and how she began to understand that it takes time for the brain to heal.

The Shock Doctrine

In THE SHOCK DOCTRINE, Naomi Klein explodes the myth that the global free market triumphed democratically. Exposing the thinking, the money trail and the puppet strings behind the world-changing crises and wars of the last four decades, The Shock Doctrine is the gripping story of how America’s “free market” policies have come to dominate the world– through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries.

At the most chaotic juncture in Iraq’s civil war, a new law is unveiled that would allow Shell and BP to claim the country’s vast oil reserves…. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater…. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts…. New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened…. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine”: using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks – wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters — to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed: the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.

Based on breakthrough historical research and four years of on-the-ground reporting in disaster zones, The Shock Doctrine vividly shows how disaster capitalism – the rapid-fire corporate reengineering of societies still reeling from shock – did not begin with September 11, 2001. The book traces its origins back fifty years, to the University of Chicago under Milton Friedman, which produced many of the leading neo-conservative and neo-liberal thinkers whose influence is still profound in Washington today. New, surprising connections are drawn between economic policy, “shock and awe” warfare and covert CIA-funded experiments in electroshock and sensory deprivation in the 1950s, research that helped write the torture manuals used today in Guantanamo Bay.

The Shock Doctrine follows the application of these ideas through our contemporary history, showing in riveting detail how well-known events of the recent past have been deliberate, active theatres for the shock doctrine…

http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine