Pathways from Traumatic Child Victimization to Delinquency: Implications for Juvenile and Permanency Court Proceedings and Decisions

Tr a u m a t i c V i c t i m i z a t i o n a n d D e l i n q u e n c y 14 J u v e n i l e a n d F a m i l y C o u r t J o u r n a l • W i n t e r 2 0 0 6 be overstated. Delinquency may have different causes and remedies depending upon the factors affecting youthful offenders and their motives. The delinquent behavior of a youth who is attempting to protect herself or himself from further victimization or who is reacting to reminders of past traumatic experiences may be no less dangerous or problematic than that of a youth who is callously indifferent to the law or the harm inflicted on people. Yet, the sanctions and services that can best modify this behavior may be very different in these two cases. In order to ensure fair application of procedure throughout the juvenile justice system, authorities representing the legal system have a responsibility to society and to youths and their families to base their judgments on a full understanding of the role that trauma and victimization can play in youths’ actions and in their reform. Psychological Trauma and Juvenile Delinquency Delinquency takes many forms, including defiance of authority, violence, impulsive behavior, drug use or selling, stealing, property damage, status offenses, and probation violation. Three key types of psychological and behavioral problems are involved in delinquency, including problems with: (1) maintaining attention and managing impulsive or hyperactive behavior, (2) pervasive indifference, negativity, or outright hostility toward others, and (3) aggressive violations of social rules, norms, or laws via cruel or criminal behavior (Lahey Waldman, & McBurnett, 1999). Any of these behaviors can put youths in harm’s way, directly by eliciting aggression or rejection from other people and indirectly via other related risky behaviors (e.g., substance abuse, unsafe driving, gambling). Over time, delinquency may become a “life-course-persistent” lifestyle of deviance and criminality that involves both causing and experiencing repeated traumas (Moffitt, 1993). Psychological trauma involves events that confront a person with the reality or immediate possibility of death, serious physical injury, or a physical violation (e.g., rape or incest). During or soon after trauma, the person experiences a biological and psychological shock that leads to intense emotional reactions such as fear, rage, confusion, or agitation, or to becoming mentally and emotionally shut-down. Many events may be psychologically traumatic, but this article will focus on one particular type: victimization. Victimization involves being threatened or harmed intentionally by a caregiver or other trusted person (e.g., sexual, physical, or emotional abuse), witnessing caregivers or significant others being intentionally harmed (e.g., domestic violence), or neglect, separation from, or abandonment by trusted adults or youths. Victimization is widespread among youths: Half of all children or adolescents in the community (Boney-McCoy & Finkelhor, 1995; Costello et al., 2003; Cuffe et al., 1998) and two-thirds in psychiatric or juvenile justice samples (Abram et al., 2004; Ford et al., 2000) have been seriously victimized. In addition, several studies suggest that traumatic victimization is associated with the behavior problems involved in delinquency (Cauffman et al., 1998; Ford et al., 2000; Lynskey & Fergusson, 1997; Steiner, Garcia, & Matthews, 1997). Ford and colleagues (2000) found that children in psychiatric treatment for severe problems with oppositional behavior were more likely to have been victimized and more impaired socially and emotionally by traumatic stress reactions than children who had problems with anxiety, depression, inattention, or hyperactivity. Traumatic stress reactions occurred for children of both genders, of all ages from childhood to adolescence, across the range of family socioeconomic levels from poor to upper middle income, and in families that had mild as well as severe levels of parent-child conflict. All of the children in the study had experienced many types of trauma that were not the result of abuse or other forms of intentional harm (e.g., accidents, injuries, illnesses, deaths). However, victimization trauma was the one type of trauma that was particularly associated with oppositional behavior. Traumatic victimization is unlikely to be the sole cause of delinquency. Genetic influences affecting each individual’s basic temperament and approach to life are a major factor in problem behaviors associated with delinquency (Jaffee, Caspi, Moffitt, & Taylor, 2004; Lahey et al., 1999) and also contribute to vulnerability to traumatic stress reactions (Koenen et al., 2003). Family problems with mental illness, drug abuse, or severe parent-child conflict also may contribute to delinquency (Lahey et al., 1999) and may lead to victimization (Boney-McCoy & Finkelhor, 1996; Chaffin, Kelleher, & Hollenberg, 1996). Living with severe family problems also may teach children that abuse, neglect, and domestic violence are J u l i a n D . F o r d e t a l . 15 W i n t e r 2 0 0 6 • J u v e n i l e a n d F a m i l y C o u r t J o u r n a l normal, acceptable, or even desirable. Such modeling and reinforcement of victimization can lead children to imitate or tolerate victimization in family, peer, and community relationships (Cauffman et al., 1998; Chaffin et al., 1996; Steiner et al., 1997). Delinquency also may place youths at risk for becoming victimized in adolescence and in adulthood (Koenen et al., 2005). While not assuming that traumatic victimization causes delinquency or that delinquency causes trauma (Dodge, Lochman, Harnish, Bates, & Pettit, 1997), a first practical implication of these research and clinical findings for judges is that no court order for either delinquency or permanency is complete without consideration of the role that traumatic victimization may have played in the young person’s development and current life. (See the box on page 16 for a concise summary of the article’s practical recommendations for judges.) A trauma history assessment is similar to but also different from a psychological or psychiatric evaluation. The goal is to identify formative experiences and ways of coping that developed as a result of suffering trauma, not to determine mental health diagnoses or issues. Those who do trauma history assessments should have social work or mental health training, specific expertise in evaluating trauma and post-traumatic stress reactions, and access to licensed professionals for consultation as needed. The National Child Traumatic Stress Network website (www.nctsnet.org) provides an overview of several standardized interview protocols and questionnaires that have been developed for conducting a systematic and sensitive trauma history assessment with youths involved in the child protection or juvenile justice systems. A trauma history assessment may be included in a mental health evaluation, but the purpose is different from that of identifying psychiatric diagnoses. Trauma history assessments inform the court about how a youth has learned to cope self-protectively as a result of being victimized (if this is the case). The goal of a trauma history assessment is to enable judges to make orders that address the youth’s needs for safety and give them help in learning ways of dealing with life that are not merely a repetition of how he or she learned to survive being victimized.1 How Does Delinquency Develop? Beginning before birth, different (but overlapping) developmental pathways lead to the three aspects of delinquency noted previously (Girourard et al., 1998; Nagin & Tremblay, 1999; Speltz, McClellan, DeKlyen, & Jones, 1999). Each pathway is determined by the combined influence of genetics, family, school, and community environments, and the child’s psychological capacities (Girouard et al., 1998; Jaffee et al., 2004; Lahey et al., 1999; Slutske et al., 1998). Inattentive, impulsive, and defiant youths who experience severe family conflict, social isolation, school failure, and anxiety or mood disorders not surprisingly are most vulnerable to delinquency. Patterson (1993) has described a “cascade of impairment” that leads first from problems with inattentiveness, impulsiveness, and negativity in early childhood to feeling rejected or demoralized by people’s negative or avoidant reactions. Over time, the child may escalate into aggression and defiance, as well as affiliating with peers and engaging in activities that encourage delinquency. Parents, peers, and teachers are likely to feel progressively more frustrated and hopeless, leading to reduced positive social contacts and supervision, and an escalation of “out-of-control” acts. Patterson (1993) identified boys who had, by grade three or four, “failed in two important tasks, peer relations and academic skills” (p. 916). Over the next five years of childhood and early adolescence, these boys often progressed through the following stages of deterioration: (a) anger, withdrawal, and depression; (b) joining “deviant” peer groups; (c) “wandering” with no monitoring by adults and little or no regard for family or school rules or curfews; (d) substance use; (e) truancy; and ultimately, (f) a police record and the beginning of potentially lifelong trouble with the law. By age 13, they were viewed by their families, schools, and communities as incorrigible. They were both “architects” and “victims” of a pathway toward delinquency (Patterson, 1993) that begins with attention problems, impulsivity, and negativity and can escalate into chronic “aggressive delinquency” in adolescence (Moffitt, 1993). Lahey et al. (1999) concluded that delinquency is the result of a bad fit between a child’s inborn tempera1 Resources for judges who want to get trauma history assessments by qualified professionals are available online through the NCTSN at www.nctsnet.org. Tr a u m a t i c V i c t i m i z a t i o n a n d D e l i n q u e n c y 16 J u v e n i l e a n d F a m i l y C o u r t J o u r n a l • W i n t e r 2 0 0 6 ment and his or her parents’ temperaments, emotional or psychiatric problems, and behavioral capacities, lifestyle, and parenting styles. Temperamentally negative, uncaring, and avoidant children tend to be difficult to get along with. However, if parents are able to help the child to redirect negativity and avoidance toward more prosocial forms of assertion, and to develop empathy for and interest in others, these temperamental traits need not develop into delinquency. On the other hand, if parents themselves are temperamentally oppositional, uncaring, or avoidant, they may not be able to respond well to their child’s temperament. Such parents are likely to role model antisocial, aggressive, addictive, or avoidant ways of dealing with people, responsibilities, and stress. Because of strong genetic influences, temperamentally oppositional, uncaring, and avoidant children are particularly likely to have parents with similar temperaments (Lahey et al., 1999). When this occurs, a child’s temperament may bring out “the worst” in the parent, and vice versa, leading to the vicious cycle of harsh, neglectful, hostile, defiant, and aggressive behavior on the part of both the child and the parents (Patterson, 1993). Addressing the Impact of Traumatic Victimization on Youths: Practical Recommendations 1. Require a thorough social history assessment of each youthʼs potential traumatic experiences and their impact on behavior problems regardless of whether a mental health evaluation is ordered. 2. Insist that evaluators consider whether a youth is motivated primarily to protect self or others from being further victimized versus by a desire to callously use, control, and victimize others. 3. Court orders should get youths (and parents) to programs that teach skills for managing emotions (including, but not limited to, anger) and thinking clearly (such as effective problem solving). These are particularly crucial skills for victimized youths, but also are relevant for most youths and families involved in the juvenile justice and child protection and permanency systems. 4. Court-ordered evaluations should address not only the evident behavioral, psychiatric, and learning problems, but also the youthʼs intellectual, emotional, and social strengths and how these have been adapted to cope with past or ongoing traumatic victimization. 5. Family involvement in rehabilitation and counseling programs is essential not only to bring to bear the positive influence of the family but also to help youths and families deal constructively with feelings of disillusionment and betrayal that are particularly likely to occur after a traumatic event. 6. Youths entering, or on the verge of entering, the juvenile justice system need services that help them manage their emotions and think clearly before they become trapped in delinquency as a result of learning to cope as a victim or victimizer. 7. Ordering services and placements that specifically teach and track emotion regulation and information processing skills can increase competency and address the due process rights of youths whose competency or ability to benefit from services otherwise will be in question. 8. Court orders should consider how to provide girls and boys with safe places to experience and develop the skills necessary to fully participate in healthy nonvictimizing relationships. J u l i a n D . F o r d e t a l . 17 W i n t e r 2 0 0 6 • J u v e n i l e a n d F a m i l y C o u r t J o u r n a l Traumatic Victimization as a Potential Key Contributing Factor to Delinquency However, even a temperamentally cooperative and sociable child may become delinquent, and many temperamentally vulnerable children who live with troubled or neglectful parents and associate with delinquent peers do not develop problems with delinquency. What makes the difference? It may be that children who are not genetically or environmentally “destined” to become delinquents but are traumatically victimized can be pushed into delinquency as a way to survive the trauma. Traumatic victimization, as we shall see, teaches children to use often drastic means to cope and survive, which may include delinquency. It also is possible that children who are “set up” inadvertently to become delinquent by their genes and family and community environments may escape this fate if they are not victimized. An unfortunate genetic inheritance or being exposed to antisocial behavior in the family or peer group are severe problems, but they do not necessarily lead to or constitute traumatic victimization. The second practical implication of our review, therefore, is that judges need to know what makes trauma traumatic and harsh events victimizing, in order to not assume that all delinquent youths are trauma survivors or victims. Children differ in their resilience (Compas, Connor, & Wadsworth, 1997), but what primarily determines whether adverse life experiences are victimizing is not how well the child copes but whether the child has the opportunity to preserve a sense of personal integrity and control in the midst of those experiences. When a child’s self-respect and sense of control is stripped away—especially if this is done on purpose by trusted persons—this is traumatic victimization. The result of victimization is a child who is likely to resort to “survival coping” —taking any means necessary to just get by, while feeling damaged, hopeless, distrusting, and empty inside. Survival coping may appear callous and defiant, but it often is a cry for help. Victimized children first struggle valiantly to survive, and do not inevitably assume the identity of a victim (Chaffin, Wherry, & Dykman, 1997). Over time, survival coping is mentally, emotionally, and physically exhausting. Chronic survival coping can lead even a highly resilient child to feel trapped by what Ford (2002) describes as: “an inescapable ‘life sentence’—a kind of prison, torture, or even a living death—rather than a temporary dilemma to be survived until a ‘normal’ life resumes” (p. 43). The youth comes to define himself or herself as a permanently trapped victim, and to see desperate attempts to ward off danger as necessary no matter the cost. Paradoxically, it is this ability to persevere with defiance that makes the difference between a traumatized delinquent and a true sociopath. If a judge can distinguish one youth’s desperate attempts to redress injustice and regain control from a second youth’s callous and hostile use of control to exact revenge or inflict suffering, this distinction points toward rehabilitation from victimization for the first, versus strenuous management of sociopathic criminality for the second. Emotion Regulation and Information Processing: Paths to Delinquency or Rehabilitation When exposed to coercion, cruelty, violence, neglect, or rejection, a child may cope by resorting to indifference, defiance of rules and authority, or aggression as self-protective counter-reactions. The child may feel so terrified, alone, and powerless in the face of victimization that the best way she or he can find to cope may take the form of anger, defiance, callousness, or aggression. In these cases, risk taking, breaking rules, fighting back, and hurting peers, authority figures, or vulnerable others (e.g., younger children, animals) reflect a shift from survival coping to victim coping. Such reactive and defensive attempts to overcome or resist helplessness and isolation caused by victimization are motivated by a desire to regain the ability to feel safe and in control. Under ideal circumstances, every youth would have a family and community that assured his or her safety and encouraged the development of a healthy sense of personal control. However, this often is not the case, particularly for youths who grow up in the adverse contexts that we know contribute to delinquency. Where can these children and adolescents turn to find safety and a meaningful sense of personal control in their lives? Often it is to one adult or older youth who shows an interest in and is protective of the boy or girl (Lahey et al., 1999). While the exact ingredients that make this relationship so powerfully positive are still being discovered, we sugTr a u m a t i c V i c t i m i z a t i o n a n d D e l i n q u e n c y 18 J u v e n i l e a n d F a m i l y C o u r t J o u r n a l • W i n t e r 2 0 0 6 gest that a key feature of these relationships is that they teach the youth—largely by the example set by the other person—ways to: 1. Regulate emotional states, especially extreme emotions such as terror, rage, confusion, despondency (Cauffman et al., 1998; Patterson, 1993; Weiss, Susser, & Catron, 1998), and 2. Process information by thinking clearly and making choices based on prior learning and likely outcomes (Dodge et al., 1997; Lahey et al., 1999; Pennington & Ozonof, 1996; Weiss et al., 1998). In contrast, for delinquent youths, emotions may seem unmanageable or absent, and thinking tends to be reactive, rigid, impulsive, and defiant. This in turn leads to distorted views of self, peers, and relationships (e.g., low self-worth, anticipating frustration or harm) and difficulty solving ordinary social problems (Dodge et al., 1997). Ford (2002) concluded that delinquent youths’ “impairments in emotion and social information processing ... closely parallel the emotional and cognitive dilemmas and deficiencies of children who have suffered traumatic victimization” (p. 39). Each child’s experience of victimization is unique, but traumatized youths often experience overwhelming disturbing emotions or virtually no emotion at all (Ford, 2002). Victimized youths tend to have difficulty with mental concentration and problem solving mainly when faced with hostility (Pollak, Vardi, Bechner, & Curtin, 2005). For a victimized youth, what might seem ordinary and safe to someone else may be riddled with potential threats based upon their past experience of being exploited or harmed in the same or similar circumstances. If such a youth seems preoccupied with inner thoughts, he or she may actually be thinking very actively about how to identify and neutralize dangers that only he or she knows. What may seem to be a deficit in thinking may be a preoccupation with solving survival problems that requires extreme clarity and creativity but which are invisible to people who have not experienced traumatic victimization. What may seem like angry defiance may be self-protective assertions of an unwillingness to be further victimized. What may seem to be very limited ability to engage in prosocial behavior may be an adaptive form of prioritizing in which survival trumps being kind, gentle, cooperative, or courteous. Thus, in order to survive both physical and emotional danger, rather than developing a flexible, curious, and open-minded style of optimistically engaging in and making sense of life experiences, a victimized youth may adopt “victim coping” as a way of life: a closed, rigid, and pessimistic way of feeling and thinking dominated by generalized distrust, avoidance, and overt or covert resistance (Dodge et al., 1995; Lynskey & Fergusson, 1997; Trickett, 1998). While most survivors of childhood victimization are not abusive as adults, victims may become perpetrators (Widom, 1999). Men who batter their partners, for example, are more likely than nonabusive men to have experienced paternal rejection, physical abuse, and an absence of maternal warmth (Dutton, Starzomski, & Ryan, 1996). These men often describe feeling like victims in current and past relationships, even as they victimize vulnerable others (Dutton et al., 1996). These findings suggest that court-ordered sanctions and services that address emotional dysregulation and survivalor victim-based information processing can play a vital role in helping children recover from traumatic victimization and also in reducing the likelihood of recidivism and escalating danger to society by youthful offenders. Consistent with the legal concepts of restorative justice (the reintegration of offenders into the community by helping them to recognize and repair the harm they have done; Bazemore, Zaslaw, & Riester, 2005) and zero tolerance (the emphasis upon personal responsibility and societal safety; Ferguson & Williams, 2002; Secker et al., 2004), delinquent youths who experience dysregulated emotions and survivalor victim-based information processing will best be able to become responsible citizens if they are assisted in gaining the capacity to manage their emotions and think clearly. Case Example Janelle, a 14-year-old African American female, was placed in juvenile detention after repeatedly running away from home. Physically and sexually abused by her stepfather from age 7 to 11 years old, she became sexually promiscuous, joined a street gang, and regularly stole from and assaulted other girls and adults, including her mother and teachers. Janelle told her probation officer that her stepfather was due to leave prison sometime in the coming year, and she expected her mother J u l i a n D . F o r d e t a l . 19 W i n t e r 2 0 0 6 • J u v e n i l e a n d F a m i l y C o u r t J o u r n a l to take him back into the home. To Janelle, this meant that she would have to leave home or kill him because she was not willing to be abused again. She didn’t want to hurt him for revenge, but saw no reason to believe he would stop abusing her unless she took drastic action to escape or to eliminate him as a threat. She said, “If he was after me when I was just a girl, he’ll really come