Transcript
Speaker: When my sister was eight years old, she'd become so shy that she was unable to answer the telephone. Our family home had a yellow rotary phone that hung on the kitchen wall and it was tethered to the back of the wall with a little black flexible cord so that you had to lift the receiver and speak to somebody by putting it up to your ear, but it stayed attached to the wall.
Speaker: If somebody happened to call her, she would cower in the corner and refuse to speak. She had been so terrorized by living in our family that she had essentially lost her voice and had become a shadow of a lively young girl.
Speaker: Our father never recovered from his wartime experiences. First a victim of Stalin's purges and terrors and then at the hands of Hitler.
Speaker: He came to North America as an immigrant with his soul in little pieces. He was a violent, arbitrary, cruel, seething alcoholic.
Speaker: He was prone to unexpected bursts of anger, frustrated by being a parent and unable to provide the patience and understanding and flexibility that he needed to be a dad.
Speaker: I remember one Christmas dinner when I was about 10 years old when he flew into a rage because the dill pickles that were on the table with the ham or the turkey had been sliced lengthwise rather than in circles, which he hadn't actually said anything about until it happened.
Speaker: I think now it was a performance to show that he was master of the house, king of the castle, in charge. He could order anyone to do anything and they better do it or there'd be hell to pay.
Speaker: Growing up under brutal dictators, I think it seemed to him that he wanted to be the one finally in control. Having reduced his family to tears, he had a kind of sullen satisfaction.
Speaker: Christmas or Easter or summer vacations don't hold many happy memories for me. Our childhood was, I think now, simply a casualty of a second order casualty of World War two I left home at 19 and I never returned.
Speaker: I couldn't get away from that radioactive environment fast enough. My sister stayed on and looking back, I think she blamed me for leaving her behind in the concentration camp.
Speaker: children hold up a mirror to their family and to society. Almost 200,000 medical and psychiatric research papers have been devoted to studying this challenging problem and the relationships among adult trauma, alcohol, and child abuse.
Speaker: Some findings suggest that parental alcohol abuse associates with physical or sexual abuse of children. And the experience of being abused as a child can increase a person's risk of alcohol problems in adulthood.
Speaker: And likewise, trauma in childhood is linked to adult depression. And there's one well-known study that found that about three quarters of chronically depressed adults have significant histories of childhood trauma.
Speaker: Furthermore, ah women who report experiences of physical abuse in their childhoods or witnessing intimate partner violence between their parents have a four to six-fold increased risk of physical violence with an intimate partner when they become adults.
Speaker: These factors associate also with poor health and depression and mental stress in these adult women. Now we learn that just last week, men just like my dad have tear gassed a family of six kids and their parents who were driving in a car in Minneapolis.
Speaker: The Jackson family have an 11 and a seven year old, four year old, they're two twins actually at four, a two year old and a six month old baby boy. They were on their way home from basketball practice.
Speaker: The agents stopped them, swore at the family, terrorized them, and tear gassed them. The youngest ones were hospitalized, three of them. The baby apparently had foaming bubbles coming out of his mouth and was in respiratory arrest after the tear gas attack.
Speaker: I haven't heard any updates yet on the health status of the little ones who are in hospital in Minneapolis right now. they might have been released, I don't know. The parents say that the children are traumatized and not sleeping.
Speaker: There are countless stories like this coming out of Minneapolis. These stories, I think, are the logical outcome of this government's policy of violence, of recruiting thugs, violent racists, troubled, fragile men, giving them lethal weapons, any immunity from consequences, and setting them loose on innocent families.
Speaker: I think first just in Minnesota, but soon I'm sure nationwide. I'm interested in the experiences of these children and what it says about the United States, particularly the Supreme Court. The justices know exactly what is happening in the Kavanaugh stops and related assaults on American citizens, others who simply speak with an accent or have a different skin tone.
Speaker: The Supreme Court refuses to step in and stop the violence. And what does it say about Americans who excuse this violence? They blame the victims, cheer the cruelty, thrill to the bullying, thrill to the murders.
Speaker: Children hold up a mirror to their society. Our traumatized children will be the real accusers and they will be the judges.
Speaker: You've been listening to The Fifth Column, a series of podcasts documenting the intersecting stresses of our time. I'm Gerry Dennis. Please tune in again soon.
