| Damion
(not his real name), an 11-year-old boy of a Water Street address (Kingston,
Jamaica) who attends a primary and junior high school in the area, said
he witnessed his uncle being killed by men from a nearby road while he
was coming from school one day.
"Mi see when mi uncle drop and di man stan’ ova him a fire wan long
gun and mi uncle jump an’ kick out him foot. Mi pee pee up miself cause
mi tink him did a go shoot up the whol’ a we [other children he was walking
with],” the young boy recounts.
Damion said when he went home and told other family members what he saw,
they immediately took him out of the area for fear that the gunman would
come back for him as he was a witness to the murder. The boy told me that
he wanted to become a police or soldier to kill his uncle’s murderer.
He further revealed that he was transferred to another school, but the
fear of the gunman seeing him and recognising his face still worries him
a lot.
Damion is but one of the many children living in inner city communities
prone to violence who have witnessed brutal acts such as shootings, rapes,
stabbings, beatings and murders, and are so traumatized that they are
growing up feeling numb when these incidents take place.
I spoke to several children in communities affected by violence and some
of the responses they gave were heartwrenching. Some were cold and calculating
with little or no remorse for those they considered the ‘enemy’.
A group of youngsters playing football one Sunday evening on Bray Street
had their game disrupted when a volley of shots were fired nearby. As
the youngsters dashed off in different directions, one extremely upset
boy said, “Mi tiad a di gunshot thing, mi want all di a di gunman dem
fi dead off.”
A naïve boy who couldn’t understand the reason for the war was expressing
this. He was not from Bray Street, but an opposing section of the community,
and had only gone to play with school friends on the enemy line.
In another section of the community, two boys who were playing got into
a fight. They resorted to throwing stones at each other until one ran
for a knife. An elderly man who was sitting nearby told them to stop the
fighting, and one of the boys disrespectfully told the man a number of
expletives. He went on to threaten the man, telling him that he would
kill him just like how a certain man had killed another. The boy was cold
as he frankly told the man that he would make his big brother 'shoot him
in the face.'
While there are those among us who think that young children are not psychologically
affected by exposure to community violence because they are too young
to understand or remember the violence, this is not so.
Children exposed to violence in the inner cities tend to be disorganised
or have agitated behaviour. At times they also have nightmares that may
even include 'monster attacks’. They may become withdrawn, fearful, or
aggressive, and they may have difficulty paying attention. They may regress
to earlier behaviour such as sucking their thumbs and bed-wetting, and
they may develop separation anxiety. They may also engage in play that
compulsively re-enacts the violence.
Other trauma-related reactions can include impaired self-esteem and body
image, learning difficulties, and acting out risk-taking behaviour such
as running away, drug or alcohol use, suicide attempts, and inappropriate
sexual activities.
At school these children are more violent than others and they go around
‘bullying’ and driving fear into other children. The way they carry out
these bullying acts is typical of what they have seen adults do.
Some relationships among family members are also at times strained. Parents
find themselves having to face the task of reassuring their child while
trying to cope with their own fears, especially if there is a chronic
risk of future community violence exposure.
While the authorities are trying to get a stranglehold on crime and violence,
they need to set up programmes to deal with these children of the inner
city who have seen, lived and experienced some of the most brutal and
vicious crimes. The graphic pictures in their minds need to be replaced
with different thinking, because, if left on their own, they may grow
up to re-enact some of what they have seen.
Children will always be children no matter how aggressive they are. By
speaking with some of those children, I found out that if adults had played
their part in helping them through some of their violent experiences,
we would not be seeing so many hardened teenage criminals responsible
for some of the most heinous crimes in our society.
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