The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog (11 page)

This is because systems in the brain change in a “use-dependent” way, as we noted earlier. 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're altering the safety mechanisms that keep the “machine” from going dangerously out of control. Such use-dependent changes in the relative power of different brain systems—just like the use-dependent templates one forms in one's memory about what the world is like—are critical determinants of human behavior. 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.

 

BY THIS POINT in my work, as odd as that may seem now, I'd only just begun to discover how important relationships are to the healing process. Our group and others had observed that the nature of a child's relationships—both before and after trauma—seemed to play a critical role in shaping their response to it. If safe, familiar and capable caregivers were available to children, they tended to recover more easily, often showing no enduring negative effects of the traumatic event. We knew that the “trauma-buffering” effect of relationships had to be mediated, somehow, by the brain.

But how? In order for an animal to be biologically successful, its brain must guide it to meet three prime directives: first, it must stay alive, second it must procreate, and third, if it bears dependent young as humans do, it must protect and nurture these offspring until they are able to fend for themselves. Even in humans, all of the thousands of complex capacities
of the brain are connected, in one way or another, to systems originally evolved to drive these three functions.

In a social species like ours, however, all three essential functions are deeply dependent upon the brain's capacity to form and maintain relationships. Individual humans are slow, weak, and incapable of surviving for long in nature without the aid of others. In the world in which our ancestors evolved a lone human would soon be a dead one. Only through cooperation, sharing with members of our extended family, living in groups and hunting and gathering together could we survive. That's why, as children, we come to associate the presence of people we know with safety and comfort; in safe and familiar settings our heart rates and blood pressure are lower, our stress response systems are quiet.

But throughout history, while some humans have been our best friends and kept us safe, others have been our worst enemies. The major predators of human beings are other human beings. Our stress-response systems, therefore, are closely interconnected with the systems that read and respond to human social cues. As a result we are very sensitive to expressions, gestures and the moods of others. As we shall see, we interpret threat and learn to handle stress by watching how those around us. We even have special cells in our brains that fire, not when we move or express emotions, but when we see others do so. Human social life is built on this ability to “reflect” each other and respond to those reflections, with both positive and negative results. For example, if you are feeling great and go to work where your supervisor is in a vile mood, soon you will probably feel lousy, too. If a teacher becomes angry or frustrated, the children in her classroom may begin to misbehave, reflecting the powerful emotion being expressed by the teacher. To calm a frightened child, you must first calm yourself.

Recognizing the power of relationships and relational cues is essential to effective therapeutic work and, indeed, to effective parenting, caregiving, teaching and just about any other human endeavor. This would turn out to be a major challenge as we started working with the Davidian children. Because, as I soon discovered, the CPS workers, law enforcement
officers and mental health workers involved in trying to help the children were all overwhelmed, stressed out and in a state of alarm themselves.

Furthermore, the more I learned about Koresh and the Davidians, the more I knew that we would have to approach the Davidian children as if they were from a completely alien culture; certainly their worldview was going to be very different from those shared by their new caretakers. Unfortunately, the very same capacity that allows us to bond with each other also allows us to collaborate to defeat a common enemy; what permits us to perform great acts of love also enables us to marginalize and dehumanize others who are not “like” us, not part of our “clan.” This tribalism can result in the most extreme forms of hatred and violence. Additionally, after their indoctrination from Koresh, I knew that these children viewed us as outsiders, nonbelievers—and as a threat. What I didn't know was what to do about that.

 

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 OK 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'd say ominous things like, “You'll see.” Every child, when asked explicitly where his or her parents were, replied, “They're dead,” or, “They are all going to die.” They told me that they would not see their parents again until David came back to earth to kill the unbelievers. But they wouldn't be more specific.

It is not unusual for children to be deceptive or withholding or to purposefully lie in order to avoid things they don't 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'd 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'd 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.

As I got to know the Davidian children, I saw similar contrasts again and again: islands of talent, knowledge and connection surrounded by vast empty spaces of neglect. For example, they could read well for their ages, as they had to study the Bible regularly. But they knew virtually no math. The talents were linked to brain regions that had been exercised and behaviors that had been rewarded. The lacunae resulted from lack of opportunities for development, in Michael's case, lack of opportunities to make choices for himself, lack of exposure to the basic choices that most children get to make as they begin to discover what they like and who they are.

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. During that time other children drew pictures of fires and explosions as well; some even said things like “We're going to blow you all up,” and “Everyone is going to die.” I knew that this was important information to convey to the FBI's hostage negotiation team and to the FBI's leadership team.

Earlier, we had created a group to facilitate communication between the various law enforcement agencies and our team. We'd made a deal with the FBI: if they'd respect the boundaries that we'd created to help these children heal, we'd 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 didn't 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. What they were describing was essentially a group-precipitated suicide. I was afraid they wanted to provoke the FBI to start this final battle. 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 didn't 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'D 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've 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. Because I like to joke around and roughhouse, when children wanted that kind of play, they would seek me out. With some, I would color or play a game and answer questions or respond to fears. With others, I played a different role. There was one boy, for example, who liked to sneak up on me. I played along, sometimes acting startled, sometimes letting him know I saw him coming, other times genuinely surprised. This form of peek-a-boo—hide-and-seek—was engaging and playful. These short interactions helped create a sense of connection for him and, I believe, safety. Because I'd interviewed all of the children and because they could see that the other staff deferred to me, they knew that I was somehow “in charge.” Because of how they'd been raised, they were acutely sensitive to signs of dominance and cues related to who currently had the most
power. These cues were, due to the patriarchal system Koresh had imposed, explicitly gendered.