The New Strong-Willed Child

Teens Who Hurt: Clinical Interventions to Break the Cycle of Adolescent Violence

Hardy, Kenneth V.; Laszloffy, Tracey A.

Hardy, K. V., & Laszloffy, T. A. (2013). Teens Who Hurt. Guilford Publications, Inc..  https://mbsdirect.vitalsource.com/books/9781462512423

Chapter 1 Adolescent Violence in a Sociocultural Context

We were captivated immediately by the bright, cherubic face and the sweet, gap-toothed smile. His smooth, pinkish complexion, unblemished by acne, and his deep dark brown eyes sparkled with the glow of innocence and the promise of the best that life had yet to offer. The image of an adorable, then 5-year-old Andrew Golden contrasted starkly with the camouflage military fatigues he was wearing and the rifle that was balanced somewhat awkwardly against his small shoulder. The odd juxtapositions reflected in this photo make it easy to see why the editors of Newsweek included it as part of an April 1998 cover story on the proliferation of school shootings across the United States.

The Newsweek article that featured Andrew had nothing to do with any of our idealized, heart-warming notions of childhood. There was no mention of high academic achievement, outstanding accomplishments in sports, noble deeds or acts of community service. Instead, Andrew’s place, in Newsweek and in history, has been defined by an act that for many of us is incomprehensible: the premeditated and vicious mass slaying of his classmates at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas.

The significance of Andrew’s story lies not in its uniqueness but rather in its growing banality. The wave of school shootings perpetrated by adolescents is but one example of the ways in which we, as a nation, have been assaulted by a growing epidemic of adolescent violence. While violence of any kind, irrespective of the perpetrator’s age, is disturbing, the notion of youthful aggressors strikes a particularly sensitive chord within many adults. Our commonly held beliefs regarding the innocence and purity of childhood make it especially hard to comprehend the extreme acts of brutality that a growing number of young people are committing.

According to noted Cornell University professor James Garbarino (1999), the current epidemic of youth violence has followed an evolutionary course that parallels most epidemics. These begin “among the most vulnerable segments of the population and then work their way outward, like ripples in a pond. These vulnerable populations don’t cause the epidemic. Rather, their disadvantaged position makes them a good host for the infection” (pp. 15–16, emphasis in original). This pattern is evident with regard to youth violence in America. “The first wave of lethal youth violence in schools peaked in the 1992–1993 school year, when fifty people died, mostly in urban schools and involving low-income minority youth. . . . We are now in Stage Two, the spread of youth violence throughout American society” (p. 16).

It is interesting to note that, until recently, most Americans didn’t seem to notice or express concern about the problem of youth violence. Ten years ago, youth violence did not garner national headlines or arouse legislators and social scientists urgently to seek out answers and solutions. Anyone who lived in a major city like Washington, DC, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, or New York was probably attuned to the issue of youth violence as a local phenomenon, but the subject received little attention from the national media. The slaughter of 50 people in schools during 1992–1993 did not result in a White House Conference on Youth Violence. The reason in part, as suggested by Garbarino, is linked to the fact that initially most of the killings were consistent with stage 1. In other words, they occurred among the most vulnerable communities in America: inner-city communities where the perpetrators and the victims were largely low-income African American and Latino youth. As long as the problem of youth violence was concentrated within poor communities of color, racism and classism mitigated against mainstream America’s noticing or attending to this violence in any meaningful way. But this changed significantly in 1998.

In 1998 there was a wave of school shootings committed by white middle-class boys in mostly white suburban communities. That was the start of the stage 2 period Garbarino described. It was also at that point that the issue of youth violence catapulted into the media spotlight and to the top of our political agenda. Today most of America is obsessed with understanding the parameters of the problem: What contributes to violence among teens and, most significantly, what is the antidote to this epidemic? These are the questions that we will grapple with in this volume. Not only will we consider the nature and magnitude of the problem, but also we will engage you in an in-depth examination of the factors that underpin adolescent violence. We will share with you four factors that we believe are critical in leading to youth violence. Most importantly, we will make specific recommendations for how each of us can work to intervene in the lives of angry adolescents, and ultimately to prevent this violence.

WHAT WE MEAN BY “VIOLENCE”

Violence involves a willful action (or inaction) that results in the intentional infliction of harm or injury. Using this definition, traditional examples of violence involve physical acts of aggression that one person directs against another. Yet, our definition is deliberately broad to allow for various “nontraditional” circumstances that we believe also constitute violence. There are three such circumstances that we wish to focus on. First, we believe that violence includes intentionally harmful actions that a person directs against him- or herself. Hence, we consider suicide to be as much an act of violence as homicide. In addition to this, Alderman (1997) coined the term “self-inflicted violence” (SIV) to describe situations in which persons set out to cause harm and injury to themselves without any obvious suicidal intent. For example, persons who burn, cut, or otherwise mutilate themselves are engaging in SIV.

Second, we believe that violence is not limited to the interpersonal level and that it is also inflicted at the broader social level as well. Therefore, we believe that war, genocide, slavery, and all manifestations of sociocultural oppression—whether it’s racism, sexism, homophobia, or poverty—are acts of violence. Each of these acts invariably involves some form of domination coupled with inequities based on differential access to power, influence, and resources. When these conditions coexist in human relationships, regardless of the level, violence is inevitable.

Finally, we believe that violence can be perpetrated passively through acts of omission. In other words, if a person is aware of a violent act and refuses to take specific action to intervene and prevent this occurrence, we believe this person is “an accomplice.” For example, a mother who is aware that her husband is sexually abusing their daughter and does nothing to intervene ultimately shares the blame for the husband’s continuing violence. We realize this last point may stretch the average reader’s comfort zone, but we want to make this point now because it underpins the spirit of activism that is reflected in this book.

PREVALENCE OF ADOLESCENT VIOLENCE

Are the Andrew Goldens merely a fluke phenomenon or, rather, evidence of a significant and alarming change in the wider culture of adolescence? According to FBI statistics, youth under the age of 21 account for nearly one-third of the overall homicide rate (Snyder, 2000). Comparatively speaking, the rate of homicides committed by U.S. youth is eight times higher than it is in other industrialized nations (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1997). Moreover, juveniles under age 18 were involved in 27% of all serious violent victimizations, including 14% of sexual assaults, 30% of robberies, and 27% of aggravated assaults (Snyder & Sickmund, 1999). According to the Office of Juvenile Justice Delinquency and Prevention (1997), 28% of teens carry weapons, and during the last 10 years, weapons-related offenses among youth between the ages of 10 and 17 have doubled. Also, within the past decade, the rate of aggravated assaults committed by adolescents has increased by 64%.

In recent years the number of youth involved in gangs has increased dramatically, and where there are gangs there is violence. The reality is that gangs contribute greatly to the escalation in homicides, aggravated assaults, rapes, and other forms of violence that adolescents commit (Hampton, Jenkins, & Gullotta, 1996; Thornberry, & Burch, 1997). Ironically, many adolescents join gangs as a form of protection against violence. As one adolescent male told us when asked why he was part of a gang, “The gang is a cover. Without this cover I would have been dead a long time ago. So, whatever I have to do to keep this cover, I’ll do it. It’s as simple as get or be gotten.” This boy’s chilling words reflect the reality that gangs and violence are inextricably intertwined. Many young people may join gangs because they provide a buffer against violence, but in exchange for this buffer members are often required to commit crimes that lead to further violence. It is an unending vicious cycle.

In terms of violence directed inwardly, the data are equally distressing. During the past 30 years the adolescent suicide rate has increased 300%. During the last decade the suicide rate for children between the ages of 10 and 14 has tripled. Among college-age youth, suicide is the third leading cause of death. Girls attempt suicide four to eight times more often than boys, although boys succeed four times more often because they tend to use more lethal means (e.g., firearms, auto crashes, hanging) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1998). With regard to race, the statistics are equally alarming. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study, there has been a 114% increase in suicides among black males aged 10–19 from 1980 through 1995, a larger figure than among any other group. For black males in the 10–14 age group, the rate of increase was 233%, compared with a 146% increase for white males in the same age category. Although we have no scientific data to support such a claim, it has always been our belief, based on our work, that many of the young children of color caught up in the crossfire of urban violence have been those with the most pronounced suicidal ideations.

SIV is the intentional act of physically hurting one’s self. Behaviors can range from hitting or bruising oneself, to cutting, burning, interfering with the healing of wounds, excessive nail biting or hair pulling, and the breaking of bones. Perhaps because the idea of purposefully hurting and mutilating one’s own body is so hard to imagine, SIV has not received the public attention it warrants. Given that most acts of SIV begin in late adolescence and peak in the early 20s, we believe any study of adolescent violence must take this phenomenon into consideration. “It has been estimated that approximately 960,000 to 1.8 million individuals in the United States engage in these behaviors” (Alderman, 1997, p. 188), and most of them are older adolescents and very young adults.

Priya, a 16-year-old girl, ritualistically burned her arms and legs with a cigarette every few months. She never allowed anyone to see her uncovered skin, which she kept hidden beneath long black skirts and long-sleeved black sweaters or shirts. Sheila was 14 when she began regularly cutting herself with a razor blade. When her wounds began to heal she often rewounded herself by picking at the scabs until they bled. Mark, a 17-year-old male, admitted to throwing himself down a flight of stairs in the hope of breaking an arm or leg. When this failed, he resorted to breaking his finger with a hammer. These are all examples of SIV.

In addition to self-mutilation, substance abuse and eating disorders are other ways in which adolescents often make themselves the targets of their own self-directed violence. Despite widespread drug education programs in the media and in schools, far too many adolescents develop abusive relationships with substances, regularly placing their health and safety in jeopardy. In terms of eating disorders, anorexia nervosa, which involves self-starvation, is most common among females between the ages of 13 and 20. Bulimia nervosa refers to cyclical patterns of bingeing and purging (e.g., self-induced vomiting, laxative or diuretic abuse, excessive exercise) and it is most common among older female adolescents and young women in their early 20’s (Gordon, 1990). It has been estimated that after puberty 5–10 million girls and women are afflicted with anorexia and bulimia nervosa (Shisslak, Crago, & Estes, 1995).

YOUTH AS VICTIMS: THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE

Why are so many youth turning to violence against others or themselves? Many therapists point to the statistics that show that many youth perpetrators of violence are also victims of it. Approximately 13% of children are victims of neglect, while 11% are victims of abuse (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2003). While this is certainly not the sole reason for teen violence, there is obviously a cyclical relationship that can and often does exist between those who are victims of violence and those who are perpetrators. While not all abused and neglected children become aggressive and violent themselves, there is a strong positive correlation between being the victim of child maltreatment and developing aggressive and violent patterns of behavior. As evidenced in a longitudinal study conducted by Wisdom (1992), adolescents who had been abused or neglected as children were significantly more likely to be arrested for violence crimes as juveniles.

Children are exposed to violence not only within their homes but also in the outside world. Among children living in high-crime neighborhoods, more than one-third have witnessed a homicide by the time they turned 15 (Bell, 1991; Garbarino, 1995). A study of first and second graders living in Washington, DC, revealed that 45% had witnessed a mugging, 31% had witnessed a shooting, and 39% had seen a dead body (Cooley-Quille, Turner, & Beidel, 1995). In Chicago, since 1974, there has been a 400% increase in the rate of serious assaults that occur in public places. The conditions in cities like DC and Chicago are mirrored throughout the United States. More than 70% of high school students report that they have witnessed a serious assault in some location other than in their homes. In fact, 36% of assaults and 40% of robberies reported by people between the ages of 12 and 19 occurred within schools.

The level of violence that exists within communities contributes to an atmosphere of fear and insecurity for young people. Children and adolescents learn that the world is not a safe place, and the sense of threat they feel makes them suspicious, untrusting, and prone to violence as a means of self-protection. Citing several studies Allen (1994) reported that a fear of being kidnapped is a number one concern among children. Global events such as terrorism and war have also left an increasing number of children feeling unsafe and uneasy about their future.

In many cases, the level of threat and lack of safety that young people experience is most severe within urban communities that are ravaged by a confluence of social ills and injustices that undermine an overall sense of harmony and stability. Within such environments, fear, aggression, and a lack of safety become self-reinforcing. The more people feel at risk, the more likely they are to engage in behaviors that further undermine their safety. We have spoken to hundreds of young people who consistently report that they join gangs or carry guns not because they revel in violence, but as a form of protection. They perceive their environment as dangerous and threatening. Moreover, they don’t trust that adults can or will be able to keep them safe from harm. In response to their overwhelming sense of imminent harm, many are driven to extreme courses of action out of fear and desperation, and tragically these actions often exacerbate the existing climate of peril.

The lack of safety is not limited to the most vulnerable communities in our nation. Children living within neighborhoods and attending schools that were once thought to be immune from the epidemic of widespread violence are also increasingly unsafe. In suburban and small-town communities across the country, children hear about, personally observe, or are directly victimized by drive-by shootings, random street violence, and other forms of public violence. One 11-year-old-boy we spoke with who attended an elementary school that was considered a model school within his state told us he carried a knife to protect himself from three other boys who had been taunting him for months. Recently they had started telling him that one day when he least expected it they were going to jump him, drag him into the woods, tie him up, and leave him there to die.

As quoted by Garbarino (1995):

It does not take much violence and terror to set a tone of threat. . . . Memory of the emotions of trauma does not decay; it remains fresh. Once you have the feeling of danger, it takes very little new threat to sustain it. Many children learn to fear violence in the world around them. Whether they literally become the targets of violence, their fear is realistic—to some degree this fear is grounded in reality. (p. 65)

Social violence is not simply people with guns shooting at one another. There is a subtle form of harm being done every moment to the psyches and physical well-being of youth who live in poverty. The 20% of our nation’s children who live in households at or under the poverty level are victims of this social violence. Poor children who go to school suffering from the wrenching pangs of hunger or the throbbing pain of decaying teeth are victims of the violence of poverty. Sadly, our society turns a blind eye to the plight of poor children. While we are able to leverage tax cuts for the rich and grant generous corporate subsidies, poor children are denied access to basic healthcare and adequate nutrition. In this sense, as a nation, we are guilty of perpetrating violence against economically disadvantaged children.

The occurrence and effects of social violence are difficult to assess. Often the violence of sociocultural oppression occurs at the institutional level, where it assaults entire groups of people in a broad-sweeping manner over a period of time. For example, children of color are victimized by institutional racism, while little girls of all races are assaulted by institutional sexism. Gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth are assaulted by institutionalized homophobia and heterosexism that lead to things like constant assumptions of heterosexuality, the failure of the media to portray gay life in a positive manner, and the social acceptability of gay-bashing in schools, on TV and on the playground. Exposure to the seemingly small and “benign” indignities of institutionalized “isms” on an almost daily basis involves a slow, persistent conditioning process that silently but methodically assaults the psyches and souls of children who share membership in socially devalued groups. At the very least, these expressions create a climate of intolerance and hatred that often sets the stage for more overt acts of interpersonal violence directed against those who hold membership in oppressed groups.

The vicious slaying of young Matthew Shepard was a painful example of homophobic violence on the interpersonal level. While the Shepard murder captured media attention, similar incidents are all too common across the country. While we were conducting a workshop in Illinois, a participant shared with us an incident in which two white boys who were members of a white supremacist group attacked a young African American boy. Not only did they beat the boy, they also carved the word “nigger” into his chest with a knife. Consider also the 1999 shooting massacre at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, both of whom were white, murdered 13 people, all of whom were white except for one, Isaiah Shoels, an African American boy. We raise the issue of race because of the role it played in the murder of Shoels, who was referred to as “a nigger” by the shooters as he was being murdered. While Harris and Klebold were intent on committing indiscriminate murder, they specifically targeted Shoels because he was black. The murder of Shoels was just like the other 12 murders committed by the two assassins in most respects, but it also was unique in that it was a racially motivated act of violence.

At the interpersonal level, sexism often leads to violence against girls in the form of sexual abuse. Sexism contributes to the notion that females of all ages are sexual objects who exist primarily to gratify male sexual desire and to affirm male dominance. Simply put, countless numbers of young people who hold membership in socially marginal groups are victimized by the violence of “the isms.” Whether it’s through institutionalized violence or violence that occurs on a more direct, interpersonal level, sociocultural oppression creates trauma and suffering in the lives of young people. Especially in light of the connection between exposure to violence and becoming violent, it is critical that we, as adults, take an active role in challenging and preventing all forms of violence in the lives of young people. But this is no easy task for any of us. While most of us are committed in principle to peace, in practice many of us engage in and support violence in countless ways that we rarely even recognize.

OUR CONFLICTING ATTITUDES TOWARD VIOLENCE

One thing that makes it difficult to deal with adolescent violence involves our society’s conflicting attitudes about this issue. We, as a society, have an ambivalent relationship with violence. On the one hand, most of us claim to abhor it. Various popular slogans or sayings declare our moral aversion to violence, such as “violence only begets violence”, “just turn the other cheek,” or “love thy neighbor.” But, on the other hand, we also seem to tolerate violence, as evidenced by the ways in which we often glorify it in the world around us. For example, our celebration of war memorials and the many film heroes who use guns, as well as the overwhelming percentage of Americans who favored bombing Afghanistan after the 9/11 tragedy, are all examples of our pro-violence disposition. As a society, we seem to live all too comfortably with our desires to achieve peace through violence, deter crime with violence, as well as punish and discipline our young with violence.

How can it be possible to simultaneously condemn and condone violence? Isn’t that a contradiction? It is. Yet, this is a contradiction that most of us live with on a daily basis. One does not have to search very hard to find examples of how we, as individuals and as a society, are able to simultaneously condemn violence as a matter of principle but act in ways that support violence in practice. One such example of this can be found in the case of Andrew Golden.

At a very early age Andrew’s father and grandfather had introduced him to guns. Not only did they make guns available to him, they also taught him how to use guns to stalk and ambush living beings. They referred to this activity as “hunting,” which Jonesboro (AR) mayor Hubert Brodell described as an all-American family pastime: “[Hunting] is done by husband and wife, by father and son and daughter. This is a family activity.”

Based on media reports, Andrew’s family was horrified to learn after the fact that, in pursing his human quarry, Andrew crouched in the bushes, focused the viewfinder of his rifle upon his intended target, and shot several rounds of ammunition that killed and injured five of his classmates in the schoolyard. No one in his family condoned this behavior or suggested that they thought it was anything but a senseless act of violence. However, neither the town’s mayor, Andrew’s father, nor his grandfather considered it violence when Andrew stalked and shot a deer or a duck. From their perspective, when the targets are human, the action is violence, but when the target is a deer or a duck, it’s something altogether different, namely, hunting.

The point here is not to debate the ethics of hunting animals but rather to draw attention to the potential contradiction between calling the hunting of animals a family pastime and the killing of humans the crime of murder. We are concerned that in the eyes of Andrew, at least, these clearly distinguishable activities became very blurred.

Andrew’s grandmother vehemently argued that he was a gentle boy who “when he wasn’t hunting animals, was trying to save and care for them.” To his grandmother, this statement made sense. She offered as proof that Andrew loved animals the fact that when he wasn’t killing them he was caring for them. But the key words are “when he’s not killing them.” How is this different from the abusive husband who, when he’s not bashing his wife’s face in, is kissing her? Do his acts of tenderness somehow erase his acts of brutality?

As individuals and as a society, we have an ambivalent attitude toward violence. Because of this ambivalence, young people are inundated with mixed messages about violence that simultaneously teach them to abhor it but also to glorify it. Moreover, as individuals and as a society, we protect ourselves from having to confront our contradictions by developing sophisticated rationalizations. When a particular act of violence is something we believe in and support, we find ways to justify it, to call it something other than violence. We have many of these sophisticated reconstructions: “war,” “capital punishment,” “corporal punishment” and “development.” One of our favorites is “discipline.”

We routinely see families in therapy where play among siblings results in one child suddenly reaching out and giving his or her brother or sister a swat across the arm or leg. Appearing slightly embarrassed and mildly irritated, a parent will often respond by saying “we don’t tolerate hitting in this family” while simultaneously using the back of his or her hand to deliver the message to the arm or leg of the offending youngster.

While we believe that any form of hitting is an act of violence, we realize there are many who would not agree. Time and again we have had parents explain to us that it’s different when they hit, versus when their children hit. They defend their hitting as a legitimate way of fulfilling their parental responsibility to discipline their children. As one mother said to us:

“There’s a difference between abuse and disciplining. I’m using physical punishment to discipline my child and teach him how to act right. If I don’t do it now, who knows what he’ll end up doing when he’s grown.”

Certainly this parent, and the many others who believe the same thing, is entitled to her view. From our perspective, however, it is contradictory to use hitting as a way of enforcing a rule that forbids hitting. We believe that striking another living being for any reason is a form of violence. To call it something else (even “discipline”) in situations where the hitter is an adult (even if solely trying to correct a child) is a sophisticated example of rationalization. Moreover, we see this as an indication of the ambivalent relationship so many of us have with violence.

In recent years our contradictory attitude toward violence has been exposed. Following the horrific terrorist attack on the United States on September 11, 2001, most Americans wanted to retaliate against our enemies. The air was thick with rhetoric calling for “striking back” and “kicking some ass.” The rationale for the proposed aggression was that it constituted “justifiable defense.” But isn’t that what the terrorists probably told themselves as well? Did they not convince themselves that the United States was the great Satan—a corrupt, morally bankrupt, exploitative, and unjust bully of the world? Didn’t they believe that their act of violence was justified because they viewed it as a form of retaliation against a vicious enemy? As self-anointed holy warriors, they probably rationalized civilian casualties as a necessary means to achieving their greater end. This is exactly the rationale used to justify bombing Afghanistan and the civilian casualties that resulted there. And it’s the same rationale that was advanced to justify the war in Iraq and the thousands of Iraqi citizens who have been killed or maimed as a consequence.

How are we able to tolerate these contradictions? In part, it is important to understand that violence and aggression are basic to human nature. Despite the social norms and mores we have developed to deter violent behavior, deep within our physiology and psychology, violence is a part of all of us. We all have the potential to be violent. From an evolutionary perspective, aggressive behavior played a necessary role in the survival of our species. Since it is coded into our DNA, the aggressive impulse resides within each human being. Under the right set of circumstances, any one of us is capable of great violence.

Given the role that evolutionary biology plays in human aggression and violence, it isn’t terribly surprising that so many of us find ways to express our aggressive impulses. Some of us hunt, join the military, or compete in sports with an aggressive orientation (e.g., boxing, ice hockey). Others of us experience this impulse vicariously. We become voyeurs in ritualistic displays of dominance and violence ranging from the WWE (World Wrestling Entertainment), to football, to rodeos, to movies and television shows that depict violence.

The value of these activities is that they allow us to gratify a natural impulse while simultaneously denying our relationship to violence. Because our social values are so strongly anti-violent, we have developed a diverse vocabulary we can use to call our aggression and violence something else. In this way, we don’t have to confront the contradictions between our rhetoric and our realities. And in this way we are better able to live with the contradictions, because we don’t see our positions as contradictory.

In instances when we are challenged to think critically about the social constructions we have devised to recast violence as “something else” that is more permissible and less toxic, we become angry. For example, we have had many heated debates with friends, family, and colleagues about whether or not football is violence. Those who deny its violence refer to it instead as a healthy competition based on shrewd strategy. And that it is . . . but it also involves violence. The violence is an essential part of what fills football stadiums. It this were not so, we could find ways to preserve the strategy and competition without the aggression. We could replace tackle football with touch football. But who could honestly imagine football fans around the country clamoring to see their favorite teams “touch” rather than “tackle.” The idea seems absurd because on some level we understand that the thrill is not just in the strategy—it’s in the slamming of bodies, the crunching of bones, and the pounding of flesh against flesh.

The danger inherent in our contradictory relationship with violence is that it’s confusing for young people. They hear our rhetoric about the immorality of violence, but they also see how we, as adults, behave. Of course, most of us would deny that we personally condone violence or have any role in the creation or maintenance of our culture of violence. While many of us are inclined to indict television, movies, music, video games, and the Internet for encouraging violence, few of us are willing to acknowledge our individual role in creating and maintaining pro-violence messages. While few of us have the power to shape the extent to which violence is reflected in the media, we can choose to act in ways that challenge media-depicted violence. For example, we can have conversations with young people about the violence they inevitably observe through the media.

Most importantly, we can choose to live our personal lives in ways that challenge, rather than conspire with, the message that violence is acceptable. We can examine our beliefs and behaviors honestly and resist the urge to rationalize the ways in which even we support violence. We can recognize that, while our instinct for aggression may account for our survival in the past, our survival in the future hinges much more on our capacity to find nonaggressive and nonviolent means of coping with the challenges we face. With this understanding, we can resist our impulse to resort to aggression and violence and replace it with tactics of negotiation and diplomacy as a means of solving conflicts and acquiring necessary resources. In other words, we can begin by personally challenging ourselves to create greater congruence and harmony between what we believe in and what we actually do.

WHY SOME TURN VIOLENT AND SOME DON’T

Why do some children become violent and not others? Again and again in our work we have encountered this basic conundrum. Directly and indirectly, the lives of young people today are besieged by violence, and this increases the risk that they will in turn become violent toward themselves or others. Yet, not all do. In this volume we will examine the four aggravating factors we have found through our work that help us understand what makes some more likely than others to become violent themselves. And more importantly, we will share how our understanding of the four aggravating factors can be translated into practical strategies that can be used to stop violence and to prevent potential violence from actually occurring.

AGGRAVATING VERSUS ETIOLOGICAL FACTORS

Within the past decade, our work with violent teens has led to the development of a model that we use to conceptualize the anatomy of adolescent violence, and to inform our prevention and intervention strategies. This model helps us understand what leads to violence in the lives of teens. Moreover, because it also helps us to understand why some kids become violent and others do not, the most hopeful part of the model is that it gives us direction for how to address and ultimately prevent such violence.

We have found four aggravating factors to be closely tied to the phenomenon of adolescent violence. We use the term “aggravating”, as opposed to “etiological,” factors because we want to dispel the idea that these factors cause violence. Human behavior is complex. It is far too complex to establish neat and simple cause-and-effect relationships. Therefore, we use the term aggravating factors to emphasize that while the mix of these factors plays a critical role in adolescent violence, we are not suggesting that they cause violence.

The four aggravating factors are devaluation, disruption/erosion of community, the dehumanization of loss, and rage. It is the confluence of these four aggravating factors that we believe is located at the heart of what divides those who do from those who don’t engage in violence. In reality, these four factors are connected inextricably. There is a synergy between them. Think of clothes in a dryer. When the dryer is in operation, it tosses the clothes inside around and around until eventually each of these seemingly separate pieces become fused in a dynamic swirl of color and texture. It is no longer possible to distinguish among the individual items because the tossing has merged all of the items beyond distinction. The four aggravating factors are interconnected in just this way. For example, devaluation often contributes to a disruption of community, and vice versa. Devaluation and the disruption of community are also forms of loss, and when losses remain unacknowledged this often contributes to a sense of devaluation. Whenever devaluation, disruption of community, and the dehumanization of loss co-occur, rage is an inevitable consequence. In a way, not all of the aggravating factors are on the same level because it is the presence of the first three that contributes to the last one (rage).

Rage is the “last step” before violence occurs. When rage develops within a person and there are few to no opportunities to express and channel rage constructively, the potential for violence increases exponentially. Of course, violence is not inevitable. The first three factors increase the risk of violence, but they do not always lead to violence. We have found that there are various ways to decrease the potential that the aggravating factors will lead to violence. Therefore, after describing each aggravating factor in detail in the first part of the book, in the second part we focus on describing specific strategies for addressing the factors and reducing the risk of violence.

OVERVIEW OF THE MODEL

Devaluation is the first aggravating factor in our model. Devaluation occurs when an individual or group’s dignity and worth are assaulted or denigrated. Devaluation can arise in response to situational circumstances, such as abandonment, unemployment, or school failure. For example, consider the life circumstances of one our clients Delores.

Delores was put up for adoption when she was 3 days old because her birth mother, at age 17, was unprepared for motherhood. Her adoptive parents, who told her from the beginning she was adopted, loved and cared for her. But Delores, while she loved her parents, always felt a part of her was missing.

“It doesn’t seem to matter how much my parents love me—I just can’t get over knowing that the woman who gave birth to me didn’t want me. I was only a baby. Who doesn’t love a baby? I know she was young, but young women raise families all the time. I feel like it was something wrong with me that made her reject me.”

Delores suffered the effects of an experience with situational devaluation in response to being given up at birth by her mother. While she feels loved by her adoptive parents, there is a part of her self-worth that was wounded by what she perceived as her birth mother’s rejection of her when she was only an infant.

Devaluation also can occur with respect to pervasive conditions such as having membership in a group that is socially stigmatized, ostracized, or marginalized (e.g., racial minorities, females, gays and lesbians). Fifteen-year-old Ben explained:

“I’m afraid to tell anyone I’m gay because I see how people feel about gays. Last week in the locker room I heard a few of the guys talking about a player from the other team who they thought was gay. They said he was a ‘fuckin fag’ and they ought to ‘kick his sissy ass’ and ‘teach him a few things about being a real man.’ That scared me to death. How can I come out when I know it’s not just a matter of people calling me names or not wanting to be friends with me? It’s a matter of my life.”

Ben’s plight as a gay youth is representative of many teens across the nation who suffer from pervasive devaluation related to their sexual orientation. As Ben stated, the devaluation he suffers extends from having to listen to anti-gay remarks, to the risk of peer rejection, and even serious threats to his physical safety. The devaluation that Ben experiences as a gay youth forces him to “stay closeted,” which means he must endure repeated assumptions of his heterosexuality by friends and family, hide his relationship with his boyfriend, and listen silently when people make cruel and ignorant comments about homosexuality.

Disruption/erosion of community constitutes the second aggravating factor of adolescent violence. Community is an emotional, psychological, and physical phenomenon. It is a place, physical but mostly metaphysical, of rootedness and belonging, where one feels a sense of connection and purpose. The establishment and maintenance of a strong sense of community are necessary preconditions for feeling safe, secure, and connected with others. Adolescents, like their adult counterparts, depend on “community” to derive a sense of identity, rootedness, and positive relations with others. When one’s sense of community has been disrupted or eroded, it contributes to a myriad of difficulties. The forces that potentially disrupt community may range from familial issues such as abuse, divorce, separation, and abandonment to broader social issues such as racial, gender, and economic oppression. We have found that there are at least three levels of community that are integral in the lives of adolescents: primary, extended, and cultural (we will describe and discuss each of these levels in greater depth in Chapter 3). When disruption or erosion occurs at two or three of these levels, it greatly exacerbates the risk of violence.

Tonya is a full-blooded Sioux Indian. For generations her ancestors lived in a state of balance with one another and the earth. With the arrival of the white man, all that changed. Tonya’s people were subjected to horrific acts of brutality by whites. One way in which white people assaulted many Native American societies was by taking children away from their parents and communities and placing them in boarding schools, where they were “resocialized” to become “good white Christians.”

“I remember we were never allowed to talk our language. We couldn’t practice any of our traditions or customs that are sacred to our people. If we were caught doing or saying anything Indian, we were severely punished. I missed my parents so much, my whole family. I missed my people and our ways. I cried every night. I kept praying that tomorrow I would be freed and would be able to go home, but tomorrow never came.”

Tonya’s experience involved the disruption of community at all three levels. She was ripped away from her primary, extended, and cultural communities. Life in the boarding school meant the disruption of community at all three levels not only in the physical sense but also in the existential, metaphysical sense. In the boarding schools, all that Tonya valued as a Native American was devalued. Hence, her experiences reflected the intersection of the disruption of community and devaluation.

Both devaluation and disruption/erosion of community involve some form of “loss.” Among teens who turn violent, we have found that their lives tend to be besieged by losses and, most notably, by the dehumanization of loss, which is the third aggravating factor. Repeated experiences of unacknowledged and unmourned loss contribute to the dehumanization of loss that is a precursor to violence. It’s one thing to lose something that was important to you, but it is far worse when no one in your universe recognizes that you have lost it. The failure to acknowledge another’s loss is to deny that person’s humanity. Hence, when loss remains unacknowledged, we refer to this as the dehumanization of loss, which is the mega-loss. When adolescents, especially those of color, are besieged with unacknowledged, unmourned, and therefore unhealed losses, they are suffering from the dehumanization of loss.

Several months ago we conducted a workshop on loss during which a participant shared an example she had noted with regard to the dehumanization of loss in the lives of children of color.

“I am a teacher in a school where 70% of the children are African American and Hispanic. My husband teaches at a school in a nearby town where only 10% of the children are of color. Three weeks ago, at the school where my husband teaches, a 15-year-old boy, who was white, was shot to death on the playground by another 15-year-old boy, who also was white. The school responded to the event by bringing in a whole team of psychologists, grief counselors, and social workers. They spent almost a week trying to help the kids understand what had happened and providing supportive services. Most of the school attended the funeral, and children wrote poems and stories about the tragic loss of a young life. The thing is, at the school I teach in, we’ve had four young people die in similar incidents just this past year, and you know what happens? Nothing. They just come in and mop up the blood and we keep right on going, business as usual. I have kids sitting in my room that are obviously suffering from trauma shock, but no one notices, no one cares. If they fall behind academically, or start acting up, we say it’s because they aren’t smart, don’t care about school, or are just plain bad. But they’re suffering and the thing is, we don’t care about their losses. Because they’re kids of color, they must be used to this type of violence—that’s the attitude. We don’t treat their pain the same as we treat the pain of white children.”

As this woman’s comments reveal, the children of color in her community and across the country often suffer many painful losses. However, because they are devalued as people of color, their losses are devalued. Their losses, no matter how significant, remain unacknowledged, unmourned, and unhealed. In short, they suffer from the dehumanization of loss.

The phenomenon of rage is the final aggravating factor. Rage is the product that emerges from the confluence of devaluation, disruption of community, and the dehumanization of loss. It is a natural and inevitable response to experiences of pain and injustice. When rage is channeled constructively, it can be a positive and transformative force. However, when rage is denied expression or treated as if it is negative, it intensifies and usually culminates in an eruption of violence. In this sense, rage is a mediating variable between the first three factors and violence. The presence of the first three factors gives birth to rage, and depending upon how rage is handled, it may eventually explode into violence.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BIOLOGY AND OUR MODEL

Most variables that lead to adolescent violence are reflected in some aspect of our model, but there is one obvious exception: neuropsychiatric and biologically-based factors. Dorothy Lewis, in her landmark 1992 study on the roots of violent behavior, found that violent offenders had higher rates of impulsivity, hyperactivity, attention deficits, and learning disabilities than did non-offenders. Moreover, violent offenders also had histories of prenatal complications and serious injuries and accidents that occurred in early life, more often than was found among non-offenders. These findings point toward a link between biological factors and violence.

According to Karr-Morse and Wiley (1997):

In order to understand the tide of violent behavior in which America is now submerged, we must look before preadolescence, before grade school, before preschool to the cradle of human formation in the first thirty-three months of life. Those months, including nine months of prenatal development and the first two years after birth (33 months), harbor the seeds of violence for a growing percentage of American children. (p. 9)

Karr-Morse and Wiley paint a compelling picture of the influence that neglect and/or maltreatment have during the 9 months of fetal development and first 24 months after birth. While neither suggests that biologically based factors cause violence, they believe that environmental conditions strongly influence biology during a critical period of development, and the biological alterations that occur in response to environmental shaping predisposes some children more than others to violence later in life. It is here where we see the convergence between biology and our model. As stated by Karr-Morse and Wiley:

Genes may have a role in shaping later violent behavior, but environmentally altered rather than inherited genes are implicated. In order for those genes to even have an adverse role in later behavior, they must interact with negative factors in the child’s environment. For example, during the early critical period of maturation of the brain, prolonged periods of intense stress may actually alter DNA, the building material of the genes. (p. 10)

While biology does influence things such as one’s degree of aggressiveness and impulse control, environmental factors play a vital role in shaping biological factors. Fetal alcohol syndrome alters the maturation of infants and places them at an increased risk for developing hyperactivity, attention deficits, aggressiveness, and impulsivity, all of which have been correlated with violence in later life. Moreover, external/environmental factors shape how caretakers (and others as well) respond to a child’s biologically based characteristics. If the behavioral effects of fetal alcohol syndrome are such that they engender frustration and rejection from primary caretakers, the young child is now at risk for experiences with devaluation, disruption of community, unacknowledged loss, and rage. This is where we see the convergence of biology and our model. Biologically based risk factors can increase children’s vulnerability to developing the four aggravating factors. Hence, biological factors do not de facto mean that a child will become violent later in life. They simply increase the potential risk. According to our work in this area, as long as children have experiences that block the four aggravating factors from developing, the inevitability of violence is thwarted.

OUR AUDIENCE

Our work with violent adolescents has brought us into contact with a variety of professionals, including therapists, teachers, youth workers, probation officers, child welfare advocates, caseworkers, and human service administrators. While all of these professionals think about young people in differing ways, and have different avenues for intervening with troubled teens, there are commonalities that link them all. Most share in common a love and concern for young people. Most have devoted substantial energy toward trying to make connections with youth in need. Many have made personal sacrifices to try to help the most troubled of our teens. Most professionals want the best for kids, but they also have struggled with frustrations when it comes to trying to help. Some of these frustrations range from inadequate social policies, to limited budgets, poorly designed programs, professional burnout, and exhaustion. In the case of violent and aggressive adolescents the frustrations that many professionals share in common tend to be rooted in the absence of a comprehensive model for understanding the factors that contribute to youth violence, coupled with insufficient strategies and resources for addressing the problem.

Our goal in writing this book is to reach out to a range of professionals who may approach their work with violent teens from differing professional angles but who share in common a compassion for kids and a desire to make substantial inroads toward addressing and deterring adolescent violence. At the same time, we also feel a deep commitment to reach out to lay readers as well. We believe that our most effective approach to addressing adolescent violence is through involving adults at all levels. Hence, we wish to engage not only a diverse range of professionals but also nonprofessionals whose lives interface with youth who are at risk of violence. In that vein, we have tried to write in a way that keeps in mind the parent or other concerned adult who is dealing with a young person who is either teetering on the brink or has crossed over into violence.

Clearly we are casting our net broadly, trying to reach out to connect with a diverse readership that interfaces with adolescents in very different ways and on differing levels. As a result, the assumptions we make about the prior knowledge, experience, and agendas of our readers are necessarily broad and fairly general. We assume, for example, that most readers of this book care about young people and are deeply concerned about the violence that is threatening to destroy a generation. We assume that all readers of this book have their own assumptions and ideas about what contributes to adolescent violence and what needs to be done to deal with this problem. Yet, at the same time, we believe that our readers have encountered obstacles and limitations associated with current approaches to addressing this problem, and they are eager for new perspectives and they want to learn innovative intervention strategies. Finally, we assume that most of those who are reading this book have at least one young person in mind whom they are concerned about, are struggling with, and/or feel some sense of anguish over how to reach out and save this person from the clutches of certain doom.

We write with the hope that, through sharing our views of what contributes to adolescent violence, each reader will be able to extract something—whether it’s a single insight or a more complex and complete conceptual framework that will assist him or her in understanding this phenomenon. We also write with the ultimate purpose of offering clear-cut practical strategies that most concerned adults, professional or otherwise, can easily employ and that will have some positive effect on ameliorating the danger they foresee or have experienced in relation to the teens with whom they are interacting.

HOW THIS BOOK IS ORGANIZED

After having said much in a general way about the four aggravating factors, we devote the remainder of the first part of this book to examining each one in depth. To bring each of the factors “to life,” we offer numerous examples of young people with whom we have interacted. We discuss each factor as an independent concept, but in reality all four are tightly interwoven and shape and inform one another in complex ways.

In the second part of the book we turn to the issue of how to translate the model into action. We present chapters that offer specific practical suggestions for how to address each of the aggravating factors. Our approach here is oriented toward both prevention and intervention. Not surprisingly, we often are asked about adolescents who may have all four aggravating factors present in their lives and yet who have never become violent. Kids like these frequently lead to the question “If this teenager has all four factors in his life, why has he never turned violent?” The answer to this question is integral to a preventative approach to adolescent violence. Among this group of teens, we have found that, in spite of the presence of the four factors, almost all of them have had experiences that counteracted devaluation, restored community, rehumanized loss, and rechanneled rage, which all played a vital role in preventing the trajectory toward violence. Hence, in part two of the book, we present detailed suggestions for how readers can counteract devaluation, restore community, rehumanize loss, and rechannel rage in the lives of adolescents, thereby intervening to disrupt current violence and preventing future violence from occurring.