Childhood trauma can lead to violence, and many are traumatized

CINCINNATI – Police say it was a dispute between two teens that led to the July 4 shooting. Milo Watson, 16, was involved in that dispute. Investigators said he was one of the shooters, and he was killed.

But what about before the argument? What led Milo to violence? It's impossible to know exactly, but juvenile court records tell some of the story.

Milo was removed from his mother's care when he was 4 months old and raised by an aunt, but his mother was still around and he wanted to spend as much time as he could with her. 

He would sneak out to see her. His aunt worried that she was too permissive and let Milo smoke marijuana. All the while, the idea of Milo's mother taking him back was in the air.

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"Milo may be getting mixed messages from his mother about whether she wants custody of him or not," notes from a March 18 hearing said.

Milo was in court for a felony-level offense. By all accounts, the court believed he was doing well with plans that were developed for him. He was working, attending addiction meetings and trying to do better in school.

Then in April, Milo's aunt told the court his mother made it clear that she was not going to seek custody.

"We do not know if she has been that candid with Milo," the court reported.

Judge Melissa Powers of the Hamilton County Juvenile Court told The Enquirer, a part of the Paste BN Network, that Milo's story is not unique among violent juvenile offenders.

"We see it over and over, very similar common denominators with the children's early life."

That common denominator is trauma, whether it be domestic violence, the loss of a parent because of death or incarceration, or substance abuse in the home.

"Almost 100% of violent offenders have early trauma," Powers said.

Trauma changes brain architecture

Dr. Bob Shapiro is the director of the child abuse team at the Mayerson Center for Safe and Healthy Children at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. He said childhood trauma, such as being separated from a parent, can change the architecture of the brain.

"The regions of the brain involved in fear and impulsive response have an overproduction of neural connections," Shapiro said. "Therefore those kids are more likely to result in impulsive and violent responses to circumstances."'

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Milo is not alone in enduring "adverse childhood experiences," or Aces. Aces also including witnessing violence, going hungry, having a parent in jail or living with someone with a drug problem.

A short test can yield an Ace score, which is a useful tool in quantifying the long-term effects of trauma.

A survey of 21,600 juveniles in Cincinnati showed 60% had at least one adverse childhood experience, and a third have at least two.

Shapiro said half of the juvenile offenders that end up in the criminal justice system have an Ace score of four or more. In the general population, only 13% of people have that many, he said.

The survey found:

• Over 15% of children surveyed have had a parent spent time in jail.
• Over 20% have witnessed or been a victim of neighborhood violence.
• About 12% have lived with someone who has drug or alcohol problem.
• Over 11% have witnessed domestic violence.
• About 30% have endured extreme economic hardship.

Kids with two or more Aces are two times more likely to have chronic health conditions and three times more likely to repeat a grade versus children with no Aces, researchers have found.

"If you have to grow up protecting yourself all the time, and watching for trauma and keeping yourself safe, you get good at it, and that requires you to be vigilant and lash out on your own," Shapiro said. "It's not willful. Our brain structure determines a lot of how we see the world. It's not about memory. It's not about will."

'This is not rocket science'

Shapiro believes the problem of childhood trauma can be addressed and solved.

"You can think of this as a fulcrum where you've got positive experiences on one side of the bar and negative experience on the other," Shapiro said. "Our job is to reduce the negative experiences and to overwhelm the child with positive, protective experiences so that the child can succeed in school, stay in school, learn how to self-regulate, (and) reduce the prevalence of juvenile and adult crime."

He said one of the most powerful factors to protect a child from trauma is a "supportive adult-child relationship."

While that is typically a parent, Shapiro said, it doesn't have to be. Mentoring programs work, but they aren't a high priority in the community, he said.

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He said we also need to treat the problems plaguing parents and teach kids to solve problems in ways that don't involve a gun.

"This is not rocket science, but you'll find that we haven't done this intentionally on a community-wide level," he said.

Shapiro said adverse childhood experiences have always caused problems for people, but the difference now is that we can do something about it.

"Forty years ago, we did not know that exposure to violence and trauma had biologic consequences. We used to say, 'Just tough it out and work it out for yourself,' " he said. "Now we understand the science behind trauma and what that does to the wiring of the brain. So we say: Wait, hold on a minute, not all of this is reversible, and not all of this is going to be under the control of the individual."

'I made a promise'

Dr. Victor Garcia is the founding director of trauma services at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.

He said the only reason he's still working is that he believes we can solve this issue of juvenile violence.

"The reason I haven't retired is because I made a promise to a mother whose child literally died in my hands in the trauma bay here at Cincinnati Children's after being shot in the chest," Garcia said. "It occurred to me despite being the best pediatric trauma program in the country, that was not saving the kids, that was not doing enough. That left me really quite empty."

Garcia made great strides in his career preventing unintentional injuries by getting kids to wear their seat belts and bicycle helmets. One of his programs was even funded globally by Toyota.

"I should be able to do the same thing for these issues," Garcia said. "I believe we can solve this if we go beyond the rhetoric, understand what's driving this, appreciate that it's not the individual.

"It's not that we should be asking what's wrong with these kids, but asking what has happened to these kids, then asking why, why, why?" 

Why? Toxic neighborhoods

He said the answer to that question is persistent traumatic stress stemming from where these kids are growing up. To put another way: toxic neighborhoods.

Garcia said toxic neighborhoods aren't just poor neighborhoods, though poverty is part of it. Public use of public assistance, the prevalence of single-parent households, violence, unemployment and structural disadvantages like racism all play a role in creating toxic places.

He also said it isn't just a Black problem. Any race living in disadvantaged neighborhoods would see the same violence. 

Garcia said this isn't conjecture, it's science.

In 1990, 4,600 low-income families were moved out of public housing projects in Chicago into lower crime areas. Garcia said the outcomes for children younger than about 13 were significant. 

Toxic neighborhoods are changing the brains of our children, he said. Functional MRI scans show structural differences in children as young as 1 month old who are born into such neighborhoods, probably the result of stresses in pregnancy.

Transformation is necessary

Garcia said we have to transform our neighborhoods – and not just the streets and the buildings through development and gentrification. He said the residents themselves should be the major beneficiaries.

He said providing meaningful, purposeful work for people is crucial, as well as fostering "collective efficacy": In other words, how well people in the community work together and take care of one another. Cities can do that by supporting organizations and social groups within neighborhoods to bring people together.

He said the fate of cities depends on  restoring broken communities and therefore reducing the violence.

"If we don't crack the code on this complex issue, the viability and the sustainability of this city is very much in doubt," Garcia said. "People are not going to want to come to a city where in the downtown there are shootings going on."

He also said there's a loss of talent when young people are subjected to persistent stress.

"There are inventors, there are Elon Musks and Steve Jobs in Avondale and in other urban neighborhoods," he said. "We can ill-afford as a country or as a city not to pay attention to that terrible waste of mind."

Follow Cameron Knight on Twitter: @ckpj99.