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Stairway to Heaven: Treating Children in the Crosshairs of
Trauma
Bruce Perry, M.D., Ph.D.
Maia Szalavitz
Abstract
This article discusses the
experiences, observations, and conclusions of Dr. Bruce Perry’s child trauma
team, which was asked to help 21 children, ranging in age from 5 months to 12
years, who had been released from David Koresh’s compound in Waco, Texas in
1993. Children were in constant fear of physical attacks, public humiliation,
and outsiders, i.e., the “Babylonians.” They were readied for an apocalypse by
being taught, for example, lethal suicide techniques. The child trauma team
found these children to be experiencing the common symptoms of trauma, e.g.,
elevated heart rates. Feeling like hostages rather than victims, the children
resisted the team’s attempts to communicate. However, by creating a stable,
predictable, and patiently loving environment and by giving children an
opportunity to express themselves (e.g., through drawings) at their own pace,
the team was able to build relationships with the children. The disastrous raid
on Koresh’s compound was a serious setback for the children. Informal followups
indicated that those who were placed in loving environments fared best. The
team concluded that loving, supportive people, not programs, change children.
Inside the Branch Davidian compound in Waco, Texas,
children lived in a world of fear. Even babies were not immune: cult leader
David Koresh believed that the wills of infants—some just eight months
old—needed to be broken with strict physical discipline if they were to stay "in
the light." Koresh was mercurial: one moment kind, attentive and nurturing, and
the next, a prophet of rage. The Davidians, as the members of the Mount Carmel
religious community were called, became exquisitely sensitive to his moods as
they attempted to curry his favor and tried, often in vain, to stave off his
vengeance.
With his volatile temper and fearsome anger, Koresh
excelled at using irregular doses of extreme threat—alternating with kind,
focused attention—to keep his followers off balance. He maintained an iron grip,
controlling every aspect of life in the compound. He separated husband from
wife, child from parent, friend from friend, undermining any relationship that
could challenge his position as the most dominant, powerful force in each
person's life. Koresh was the source of all insight, wisdom, love and power; he
was the conduit to God, if not God himself on earth.
And he was a god who ruled by fear. Children (and sometimes
even adults) were in constant fear of the physical attacks and public
humiliation that could result from the tiniest error, like spilling milk.
Punishment often involved being beaten bloody with a wooden paddle called "the
helper." Davidian children also feared hunger: those who "misbehaved" could be
deprived of food for days or put on a bland diet of only potatoes or bread.
Sometimes, they would be isolated overnight. And, for the girls, there was
knowledge that they would ultimately become a "Bride of David." In a unique form
of sanctioned sexual abuse, girls as young as ten were groomed to become
Koresh's sexual partners. A former member said Koresh once excitedly compared
the heartbeats of the prepubescent girls he violated to those of hunted animals.
But perhaps the most pervasive fear that Koresh instilled
was the fear of the "Babylonians": outsiders, government agents, nonbelievers.
Koresh preached about and constantly prepared his community for the "final
battle." The Branch Davidians, including children, were being readied for the
imminent end of the world (hence Koresh's nickname for the compound, Ranch
Apocalypse). This preparation involved military drills, interrupted sleep and
one-on-one fighting. If the children did not want to participate or were not
vicious enough in battle training, they were humiliated and sometimes beaten.
Even the youngest members were taught how to handle guns. They were instructed
in the most lethal suicide techniques with firearms, being told to aim for the
"soft spot" in the back of the mouth if they faced capture by the "Babylonians."
The rationale was that "unbelievers" would ultimately come to kill everyone.
After this apocalyptic battle, however, members were promised that they would be
reunited with their families in heaven and Koresh—God—would return to earth to
smite his enemies.
I came to Texas in 1992 to become the vice chairman for
research in the department of psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) in
Houston. I also served as chief of psychiatry at Texas Children's Hospital (TCH)
and director of the Trauma Recovery Program at the Houston Veterans
Administration Medical Center (VAMC). My past experiences at a residential
center had convinced me that we did not know enough about trauma and its effects
on children's mental health. We did not know how trauma during development
produced particular problems in particular children. The only way to figure this
out, it seemed, was to closely study groups of children immediately after a
traumatic event. Unfortunately, children were usually brought to us for help
only years after they had suffered trauma, not right away.
It was to attempt to solve this problem that I, in
coordination with BCM, TCH and VAMC, put together a "rapid response" Trauma
Assessment Team. It was our hope that while helping children cope with acute
traumas like shootings, car accidents, natural disasters and other
life-threatening situations, we could learn what to expect from children in the
immediate aftermath of a traumatic experience and how this related to any
symptoms they might ultimately suffer. The children of Waco would provide one
unfortunately apt sample to study.
On February 28, 1993, the "Babylonians" in the form of the
Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) came to the Branch Davidian
compound to arrest David Koresh for firearms violations. He would not allow
himself to be taken alive. Four BATF agents and at least six Branch Davidians
were killed in the ensuing raid. The FBI and its hostage-negotiation team
managed to secure the release of twenty-one children over the following three
days. It was at this point that my team was brought in to help with what we
thought would be the first wave of children from the compound.
I heard about the first raid on the Branch Davidian
compound like most people did: from the news on television. Almost immediately,
reporters began calling to ask me how the raid might affect the children. When I
was questioned about what was being done to help those who had been removed from
the compound, I replied almost off-handedly that I was sure the state was making
sure they were properly cared for.
But just as soon as the words left my mouth, I realized
that this was probably not true. Government agencies—especially the chronically
underfunded and overburdened Child Protective Service (CPS) systems—rarely have
concrete plans to deal with sudden influxes of large groups of children.
Furthermore, chains of command between the federal, state and local agencies
involved in law enforcement and CPS are often unclear in unusual, fast-moving
crises like the Waco standoff.
As I thought more about this I felt pulled to see whether
the expertise on childhood trauma that our Trauma Assessment Team had been
developing could be helpful. I contacted several agencies but no one could tell
me who was "in charge." Finally I reached the governor's office. Within a few
hours I was called by the state office of CPS and was asked to come to Waco for
what I thought would be a one-time consultation. That afternoon meeting turned
into six weeks of one of the most difficult cases I have ever had.
When I arrived in Waco I found disarray, both in the
official agencies responding to the crisis and in the care of the children.
During the first few days, when the children were released, they were driven
away from the compound in large tank-like vehicles. No matter what time of day
or night it was when they came out, they were immediately interrogated by the
FBI and the Texas Rangers, often for hours. The FBI had the best intentions;
they wanted information quickly so that they could help defuse the situation at
the Ranch and get more people out safely. But no one had thought through how
overwhelming it would be for a child to be taken from his parents, put in a tank
after witnessing a deadly raid on his home, driven to an armory and questioned
at length by numerous armed, strange men.
It was only dumb luck that kept the Davidian children
together after the first raid. Originally, Texas CPS had planned to place them
in individual foster homes, but they could not find enough homes fast enough to
take all of them. Keeping them together turned out to be one of the most
therapeutic decisions made in their case. After what they had just experienced,
ripping them from their peers and/or siblings would only have increased their
distress.
Instead of foster homes the children were brought to a
pleasant, campus-like setting, the Methodist Children's Home in Waco. There,
they lived in a large cottage, initially guarded by two armed Texas Rangers.
They were cared for by two rotating live-in couples, the "house mothers" and
"house fathers."
In those early days the atmosphere of the cottage was
chaotic. Officers from various law enforcement agencies would show up at any
time, day or night, and pull aside particular girls or boys for interviews.
There was no schedule to their daily life and no regularity to the people that
they would see. One of the few things I knew for sure by then about traumatized
children was that they need predictability, routine, a sense of control and
stable relationships with supportive people. This was even more important than
usual for the Davidian children: they were coming from a place where they had
for years been kept in a state of alarm, led to expect catastrophe at any
minute.
During my initial afternoon meeting with the key agencies
involved, my advice boiled down to this: create consistency, routine and
familiarity. That meant establishing order, setting up clear boundaries,
improving cross-organizational communication and limiting the mental health
staff to those who could regularly be there for the children. I also suggested
that only those who had training in interviewing children be allowed to conduct
the forensic interviews for the Rangers and the FBI. At the end of the meeting
CPS asked me if I would be willing to lead in the coordination of these efforts.
Later that day, after meeting with FBI agents, I was also asked to do the
forensic interviews myself. At that point we still thought that the crisis would
be over in days, so I agreed.
When I got to the cottage one of the Rangers stopped me at
the door. He was tall and imposing in his hat, the archetype of Texas law
enforcement. He was not impressed by this long-haired man in jeans claiming to
be a psychiatrist who had come to help the children. Even after I had
established that I was indeed Dr. Perry, he told me that I did not look like a
doctor, and further, "Those kids don't need a shrink," he said. "All they need
is a little love and to get as far away from here as possible."
Ultimately, this Ranger would turn out to be one of the
most positive and healing figures in the children's lives for the weeks they
stayed at the cottage. He was calm, good with children, and intuitively seemed
to know how to provide a supportive but not intrusive presence. But right then,
he was in my way. I said to him, "Okay, I'll tell you what. Do you know how to
take a pulse?" I directed his attention to a young girl who was fast asleep on a
nearby couch. I told him that if her pulse was less than 100, I would turn
around and go home. The normal heart rate range for a child her age at rest is
70-90 beats per minute.
He bent down gently to pick up the girl's wrist, and within
moments his face filled with anxiety. "Get a doctor," he said. "I am a doctor,"
I replied. "No, a real doctor," he said, "This child's pulse is 160."
After reassuring him that psychiatrists are physicians with
standard medical training, I began to describe the physiological effects of
trauma on children. In this case an elevated heart rate was likely a reflection
of the girl's persistently activated stress-response system. The ranger
understood the basics of the fight or flight response. I noted that the same
hormones and neurotransmitters that flood the brain during a stressful
event—adrenaline and noradrenaline—are also involved in regulating heart rate,
which makes sense since changes in heart rate are needed to react to stress. The
Ranger let me in.
The Davidian children had been released in small groups in
the first three days following the February raid. They ranged in age from five
months to twelve years old. Most were between four and eleven. They came from
ten different families, and seventeen of the twenty-one were released with at
least one sibling. Although some former members have disputed accounts of child
abuse among the Davidians, there was never any doubt that the children had been
traumatized, certainly by the raid on the compound, but also by their life
beforehand.
These children did not feel as though they had just been
liberated. Instead, because of what they had been taught about outsiders and
because of the violence they had survived, they felt like hostages. They were
more frightened of us now than they had been at home, not only because they were
suddenly deprived of family and familiarity, but also because Koresh's
predictions about an attack had come true. If he was right that the
"unbelievers" had come for them, they figured, his assertion that we intended to
kill them and their families was probably correct as well.
We immediately recognized that we had a group of children
that had essentially been marinated in fear. The only way we could get them the
help they needed was to apply our understanding of how fear affects the brain
and then consequently changes behavior.
Fear is our most primal emotion, and with good evolutionary
reason. Without it few of our ancestors would have survived. Fear literally
arises from the core of the brain, affecting all brain areas and their functions
in rapidly expanding waves of neurochemical activity.
The brain evolved from the inside out, and it develops in
much the same order. The lowest, most primitive region—the brainstem—completes
much of its development in utero and in early infancy. The midbrain and limbic
systems develop next, elaborating themselves exuberantly over the first three
years of life. Parents of teenagers will not be surprised to learn that the
frontal lobes of the cortex, which regulate planning, self-control and abstract
thought, do not complete their development until late in adolescence, showing
significant reorganization well into the early twenties.
The fact that the brain develops sequentially—and also so
rapidly in the first years of life—explains why extremely young children are at
such great risk of suffering lasting effects of trauma: their brains are still
developing. The same miraculous plasticity that allows young brains to quickly
learn love and language, unfortunately, also makes them highly susceptible to
negative experiences as well. As a result different symptoms may result from
trauma experienced at different times.
At any age, however, when people are faced with a
frightening situation their brains begin to shut down their highest cortical
regions first. We lose the capacity
to plan, or to feel hunger, because neither are of any use to our immediate
survival. Often we lose the ability to "think" or even speak during an acute
threat. We just react. And with prolonged fear there can be chronic or
near-permanent changes in the brain. The brain alterations that result from
lingering terror, especially early in life, may cause an enduring shift to a
more impulsive, more aggressive, less thoughtful and less compassionate way of
responding to the world.
This is because systems in the brain change in a
"use-dependent" way. Just like a muscle, the more a brain system like the stress
response network gets "exercised," the more it changes and the more risk there
is of altered functioning. At the same time, the less the cortical regions,
which usually control and modulate stress, are used, the smaller and weaker they
get. Exposing a person to chronic fear and stress is like weakening the braking
power of a car while adding a more powerful engine: you are altering the safety
mechanisms that keep the "machine" from going dangerously out of control.
Understanding the importance of use-dependent development was vital to our work
in treating traumatized children like those we saw in the immediate aftermath of
the first raid on Ranch Apocalypse.
During my first two days in Waco I began the delicate task
of individually interviewing each child to try to get useful information to help
the FBI negotiators defuse the standoff. In any situation where child abuse is
suspected, such interviews are difficult because children, quite reasonably,
worry about getting their parents in trouble. In this case, it was further
complicated by the fact that the Davidians had been brought up to believe that
it was okay to deceive "Babylonians" because we were the enemies of God. I knew
they might fear that being honest with us was not only a possible betrayal of
their parents, but a grievous sin as well.
To my horror, every child gave me the distinct sense that
they had a big, terrible secret. When I asked what was going to happen at the
Ranch, they would say ominous things like, "You'll see." Every child, when asked
explicitly where his or her parents were, replied, "They're dead," or, "They're
all going to die."
It is not unusual for children to be deceptive or
withholding or to purposefully lie in order to avoid things they do not want to
share, especially when they have been instructed to do so by their families.
However, it is far more difficult for them to hide their true thoughts and
feelings in their artwork. And so, with each child old enough to color, I sat
with him and colored as we talked. I asked one ten-year-old boy named Michael,
who was one of the first children interviewed, to draw me a picture of whatever
he wanted. He went to work quickly, producing a fine unicorn surrounded by a
lush, earthly landscape of forested hills. In the sky were clouds, a castle and
a rainbow. I praised his drawing skills and he told me that David loved it when
he drew horses. He had also received kudos from the group and its leader for his
renditions of heavenly castles and the incorporation of the group's symbol into
his drawings: the star of David.
Then I asked him to draw a self-portrait. What he drew was
virtually a stick figure, something that a four-year-old could produce. Even
more shockingly, when I asked him to draw his family, he paused and seemed
confused. Finally, he created a page that was blank but for a tiny picture of
himself, squeezed into the far right-hand corner. His drawings reflected what he
had learned in the group: the elaboration of things that Koresh valued, the
dominance of its supreme leader, a confused, impoverished sense of family and an
immature, dependent picture of himself.
Inside the compound almost every decision—from what to eat
and wear to how to think and pray—had been made for them. And, just like every
other area in the brain, the regions involved in developing a sense of self grow
or stagnate depending upon how often they are exercised. To develop a self, one
must exercise choice and learn from the consequences of those choices; if the
only thing you are taught is to comply, you have little way of knowing what you
like and want.
One of my next interviews was with a little girl, almost
six years old. I asked her to draw a picture of her home. She drew a picture of
the compound. Then I asked her what she thought was going to happen at home. She
redrew the same compound building with flames everywhere. Atop it was a stairway
to heaven. I knew then—just days after the first raid—that the siege was headed
for a potentially cataclysmic conclusion.
Earlier, we had created a group to facilitate communication
between the various law enforcement agencies and our team. We had made a deal
with the FBI: if they would respect the boundaries that we had created to help
these children heal, we would share any information our work revealed that might
help them negotiate an end to the standoff. After I saw these drawings and heard
these remarks I immediately communicated my concerns that any further attack on
the compound had the potential to precipitate some kind of apocalypse. I did not
know the exact form it would take, but it seemed it would be an explosive, fiery
end. The words, the drawings and the behaviors of the children all pointed to a
shared belief that the siege would end in death.
I met repeatedly with my FBI liaison and members of the
behavioral science team, who, I later learned, agreed with me that further
escalation by law enforcement would more likely provoke disaster, not surrender.
But they were not in charge. The tactical team was, and they would listen but
not hear. They believed that they were dealing with a fraud and a criminal. They
did not understand that Koresh's followers truly believed that their leader was
a messenger of God, possibly even Christ returned, with the self-sacrificing
devotion and commitment such a belief implies. This clash of group worldviews
shaped the escalating actions that contributed to the final catastrophe.
After I had completed my initial interviews more than a
dozen people from my home institutions in Houston joined me in Waco to form the
core of our clinical team. Along with the guards, CPS workers and Methodist Home
staff, we worked to end the unstructured chaos in the cottage. We scheduled a
regular bedtime and regular meal times, created time for school, for free play
and for the children to be given information about what was happening at the
Ranch. Since the outcome of the siege was unpredictable, we did not allow them
to watch TV or expose them to any other media coverage.
In the beginning there was a push by some in our group to
start "therapy" with the children. I felt it was more important at this time to
restore order and be available to support, interact with, nurture, respect,
listen to, play with and generally "be present." The children's experience was
so recent and so raw, it seemed to me that a conventional therapeutic session
with a stranger, particularly a "Babylonian," would potentially be distressing.
Incidentally, since Waco, research has demonstrated that
rushing to "debrief" people with a new therapist or counselor after a traumatic
event is often intrusive, unwanted and may actually be counterproductive. Some
studies, in fact, find a doubling of the odds of post-traumatic stress disorder
following such "treatment." In some of our own work we have also found that the
most effective interventions involve educating and supporting the existing
social support network, particularly the family, about the known and predictable
effects of acute trauma and offering access to more therapeutic support if—and
only if—the family sees extreme or prolonged post-traumatic symptoms.
I thought these children needed the opportunity to process
what had happened at their own pace and in their own ways. If they wanted to
talk, they could come to a staff member that they felt comfortable with; if not,
they could play safely and develop new childhood memories and experiences to
begin offsetting their earlier, fearful ones. We wanted to offer structure, but
not rigidity; nurturance, but not forced affection.
Each night after the children went to bed our team would
meet to review the day and discuss each child. This "staffing" process began to
reveal patterns that suggested therapeutic experiences were taking place in
short, minutes-long interactions. As we charted these contacts we found that,
despite having no formal "therapy" sessions, each child was actually getting
hours of intimate, nurturing, therapeutic connections each day. The child
controlled when, with whom and how she interacted with the child-sensitive
adults around her. Because our staff had a variety of strengths—some were very
touchy-feely and nurturing, others were humorous, still others good listeners or
sources of information—the children could seek out what they needed, when they
needed it. This created a powerful therapeutic web. And so children would
gravitate toward particular staffers who matched their specific personality,
stage of development or mood.
But these children needed more than just the ability to
choose whom to talk to and what to discuss. They also needed the stability that
comes from routine. In the first days following the assault with no external
organization imposed upon them, they immediately replicated the authoritarian,
sexually segregated culture of the Davidian compound, where men and boys over
twelve were segregated from women and girls, and where David Koresh and his
representatives ruled with absolute power.
Two of the oldest children, siblings, a boy and a girl,
declared themselves "scribes." The female scribe dominated and made decisions
for the girls, and the boy led the boys and also held sway over the female
scribe, with the other children falling into line and complying without
complaint. The girls and boys sat at separate tables for meals; they played
separately and deliberately avoided interaction if at all possible. The oldest
girls, who had been in the process of preparing to be David's "Bride," would
draw stars of David on yellow Post-it notes or write "David is God" on them and
put them up around the cottage.
But none of the children knew what to do when faced with
the simplest of choices: when offered a plain peanut butter sandwich as opposed
to one with jelly, they became confused, even angry. Having never been allowed
the basic choices that most children get to make as they begin to discover what
they like and who they are, they had no sense of self. The idea of
self-determination was, like all new things for them, unfamiliar and, therefore,
anxiety provoking. So the children turned to the scribes for guidance and let
them make these decisions.
We were not sure how to deal with this issue. We wanted
them to have a sense of the familiar and to feel "at home," and we thought that
allowing them these rituals might help them feel safe. On the other hand we knew
that they would need to learn what would soon be expected of them in the outside
world.
We had only trial and error to guide us. My first attempt
to break the segregation between the boys and the girls was a disaster. One day
I sat down at the girls' table for lunch. Immediately, all of the children
seemed to tense up. A three- or four-year-old girl challenged me, saying, "You
can't sit here." I asked why. She said, "Because you're a boy."
"How do you know?" I asked, trying to use humor to defuse
the situation, but she stuck with her challenge and looked to the female scribe,
who confirmed to her that I was male. When I continued to sit there almost all
of the children became angry and the air became so charged and hostile that I
was afraid they would riot. Some of them stood up, taking an aggressive stance.
I backed off. After that, we allowed them to maintain their separate tables and
the bizarre dietary restrictions that Koresh had imposed, such as not eating
fruit and vegetables at the same meal.
We decided that all we could do was to allow them to see
how we adults lived and interacted with each other, and hope that over time they
would see that there would not be negative consequences if they chose to live as
we did.
And we began to see that as children coped with the
aftermath of terrifying experiences like the first raid on
Ranch Apocalypse, they responded to reminders of what happened similarly to the
way they responded at the time. So, for example, if they were able to flee, they
might respond with avoidance; if they fought back, they might respond
aggressively; if they dissociated, they would do that again. During an interview
with one of the girls, Susie, a six-year-old, I saw one of the most extreme
dissociative responses I had ever witnessed. I had asked Susie where she thought
her mother was. She responded as though she had not heard the question. She
crawled under a table, tucked herself into a fetal position and did not move or
talk. Even when I tried to touch her to comfort her, she was so nonresponsive
that she did not notice when I walked out of the room six minutes later.
Our questions, of course, were not the only reminders of
what they had witnessed. One day a press helicopter flew over the cottage when
the children were playing outside. They had been told by Koresh that the FBI
would fly over them with helicopters, douse them with gasoline and light them on
fire. Within seconds, the children had disappeared and taken cover, like a
platoon in a combat movie. When the helicopter had passed, they formed two
single-file lines, one of boys, one of girls, and marched into the building
chanting a song about being soldiers of God. It was one of the eeriest things I
have ever seen.
During the standoff at Waco our team literally lived with
the Branch Davidian children. I would make the hours-long drive to Houston now
and then to take care of the bare minimum of my administrative duties and family
responsibilities. I spent hours in meetings with partner organizations dealing
with the crisis, trying to ensure that when they left us, these children would
go to safe, healthy families, and also trying to see to it that those who needed
it received continuing mental health care. I also spent many frustrating hours
trying to get the information we had learned about the high probability of a
mass suicide or suicidal terror attack on the officers surrounding the compound
to someone who would listen and who could change the tactics being used.
Unfortunately, however, the tactical team in charge of
operations continued to see Koresh as a con man, not a religious leader. Just as
the group dynamics within the cult pushed them toward their horrific conclusion,
so too did the group dynamics within law enforcement. Both groups tragically
disregarded input that did not fit their world view, their template.
Working with the Davidian children—and seeing the unfolding
crisis in Waco from the inside—repeatedly reiterated to me how powerful group
influences are in human life and how the human brain cannot really be understood
outside of its context as the brain of a member of a highly social species.
Early in the morning of April 19, while in Houston, I
received a call from an FBI agent I did not know. He said that I needed to come
to Waco immediately: the government had begun a raid on the compound intended to
end the siege and free the young people who remained inside. As I drove I
listened to the radio. When I crested the hill at the boundary of the city, I
saw a massive pillar of thick gray smoke and orange fire. I continued
immediately to the Methodist Children's Home. The adults looked stricken, but
they had managed so far to avoid betraying their distress to the children. They
had been preparing to care for the twenty-three children still inside the
compound, getting to know them through their siblings and through videotapes
made of the children inside the compound by Koresh and released to the FBI. Now
they felt their loss, and were all too aware of how their deaths would affect
the children they were already treating.
Adding to our pain was the fact that we knew that much of
the trust we had developed with these children would probably now evaporate. We
had told them that we were not their enemies and that their parents, siblings
and friends would not be killed. But events would now further confirm the
accuracy of Koresh's prophecies.
We had to carefully decide the best way to break the news.
Due to the unfolding of events, we waited until the next day because we did not
have information about survivors until then.
We set up a meeting in the living room of the cottage. Each
child there had developed a close relationship with at least one or more of the
staff in our team. Our plan was that I would tell the group what happened in as
factual and clear a manner as possible. We would ask them if they had any
questions. After that, each child or sibling group would spend time with the two
or three staff members they were close to.
It was one of the most difficult moments of my clinical
life. How do you tell a dozen children that their fathers, brothers, mothers,
sisters and friends are dead? And yes, they died just as Koresh foretold. And
yes, we assured you that this would not happen. At first, some simply refused to
believe me. "It's not true," they said over and over, as many people do when
faced with the death of loved ones, "It can't be." Others said, "I knew this
would happen," or, "I told you so."
The worst part of all was knowing that things did not have
to end this way. The response of the Davidians to the final assault was
predictable, and the loss of life could have certainly been mitigated if not
entirely prevented. Nonetheless, the federal government had taken the action
most likely to result in a disaster, and eighty people, virtually everyone these
children knew, had died.
By the time of the fire many of the children had already
gone to live with relatives outside the group; only about eleven girls and boys
remained at the cottage. The raid was, unsurprisingly, a setback for most of
them. Their traumatic symptoms returned, as did their observance of Koresh's
dietary rules and sexual segregation.
By this time we had learned how careful we had to be. There
was a big debate, for example, as to what to do about the fact that the girls
and boys still took their meals at two separate tables. I finally suggested that
we remove one of the tables and see what happened. When one of the girls asked
why we were taking it away, I told her that we did not need it any more. She
accepted my reply without further inquiry; it was clear that there were far
fewer children living at the cottage by then. At first the girls sat at one end
and the boys at the other. Then slowly and naturally, they began to interact and
mix. Over time their traumatic symptoms and their observance of Koresh's rules
began to recede again.
Now, fourteen years later, we have had various
opportunities to follow the Davidian children—all informal. We know that all of
them have been permanently and profoundly affected by what occurred. About half
left to live with relatives who still believed in Koresh's message, and some
still follow the religion in which they were raised. Some have gone on to
college and careers, and have had their own families; others have led troubled
and chaotic lives.
There were inquiries, Congressional hearings, books,
exposes and documentaries. However, despite all this attention, it was still
only a few short months before interest in these children dropped away. There
were criminal trials, civil trials, lots of sound and fury. All of the
systems—CPS, the FBI, the Rangers, our group in Houston—returned, in most ways,
to our old models and our ways of doing things. But while little changed in our
practice, a lot had changed in our thinking.
We learned that some of the most therapeutic experiences do
not take place in "therapy," but in naturally occurring healthy relationships,
whether between a professional like myself and a child, between an aunt and a
scared little girl or between a calm Texas Ranger and an excitable boy. The
children who did best after the Davidian apocalypse were not those who
experienced the least stress or those who participated most enthusiastically in
talking with us at the cottage. They were the ones who were released afterwards
into the healthiest and most loving worlds, whether it was with family who still
believed in the Davidian ways or with loved ones who rejected Koresh entirely.
In fact, the research on the most effective treatments to help child trauma
victims might be accurately summed up this way: what works best is anything that
increases the quality and number of relationships in the child's life.
I also saw how bringing disparate groups together—even
those with conflicting missions—could often be effective. Dozens of state,
federal and local agencies had worked together to care for these children. The
power of proximity—spending time side-by-side—had pulled us all to compromise in
our efforts to help.
Relationships matter: the currency for systemic change was
trust, and trust comes through forming healthy working relationships. People,
not programs, change people. The cooperation, respect and collaboration we
experienced gave us hope that we could make a difference, even though the raids
themselves had ended in such catastrophe. The seeds of a new way of working with
traumatized children were sown in the ashes of Waco.
Acknowledgment
From the book,
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog, by Bruce Perry and Maia
Szalavitz. Copyright © 2006 by Bruce Perry and Maia Szalavitz.
Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
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