Episode Transcript
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Hi, This is vat General Recovery. We guys special guest Victor B.
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And he's going to tell us a
little bit about himself and then we're gonna
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rush into some questions about him.
Thanks Rachel, good to be with you.
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I am Chief Program Officer for Education
Research at Zero Abuse Project, where
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non profit organization. We provide training
type of assistance publications to Telby's prosecutors and
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investigators. So we also work with
universities to improve undergraduate and graduate training.
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We engage in a wide variety of
prevention initiatives, we publish, we do
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research, and perhaps pertinent to impart
our conversation today, we do a lot
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um of work on the intersection between
religion and child abuse, so we try
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to improve both the faith and secular
community's response to the spiritual impact of trauma.
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Okay, um, tell us,
how did you get into this type
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of work? Yeah, yeah,
I didn't plan on it in law school.
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Back then. I was thinking of
maybe going into public policy or perhaps
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being a public defender. But after
I graduated from law school, I got
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a job in a comming attorney's office. They signed me to a termination of
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parental rights case and there was a
poignant moment in the trial where one of
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our social workers was cross examined by
the defense attorney about all the things that
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he did wrong, and he he
got emotional and said, well, you
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know, I I came in and
saw the baby on the floor, not
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in great condition, and the child
was covered with maggots, and I just
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didn't know what to do. I
scooped up the infant and took the child
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to a medical provider, and I
was so impacted by that emotionally, I
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I thought, Wow, I think
this is what I want to do with
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my my life. I want to
work in the field of of child protection,
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and I really want to improve the
skills of all of us who respond
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to trauma because quite frankly, none
of us in that trial, Uh we're
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properly educated our undergraduate graduate programs to
respond to these issues, and that contributes
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to a lot of mishandling of cases
in the field. So I gave my
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life to chow protection. I served
as a prosecutor chow protection attorney for a
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decade, and then I ended up
in the national level. And so now
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I've been been in the field for
going on thirty six years. That's awesome.
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Um, tell us a little bit
about Project Zero Abuse Project. Yeah,
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we UM operate under a number of
federal and state grants and so we
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UH provide training, town of assistance
publications to ChIL Abust prosecutors and investigators.
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So we we trained several thousand a
year. We consult on cases, and
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we do publications to advance the field. We oversee UH an initiative Cultural First
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that helps train professionals how to interview
children who are making an outcry of child
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sexual abuse. We work under a
program called CASTE Child Advocacy Studies to improve
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undergraduate and graduate training. I think
we're over ninety universities that have implemented that
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particular reform. And then UH we
have a number of initiatives to try to
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improve the response of faith leaders to
child abuse. So we have a program
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called Keeping Faith where we bring faith
in secular communities in the same room and
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teach them how to work together.
We work with seminaries to improve education to
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better prepare clergy to respond to the
spiritual impact of of trauma. UM and
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then you know, really whatever the
field needs, we try to adapt and
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grow resources. So we're increasingly doing
a lot on technology facilitated crimes against children
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and helping the field respond to that
particular dynamic as well. Okay, um,
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all right, what does the research
tell us about the about the the
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effects of physical and emotional impact of
trauma? Yeah, maybe the best study
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to to help folks get a handle
on that. He began at Kaiser Permanente,
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doctor named Vincent Feletti was overseeing a
major weight loss control program and he
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noticed something in the program that was
shocking. He noticed the men and women
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doing the best at losing weight were
also the quickest to drop out of the
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program and rapidly regain their weight.
In fact, they would regain their weight
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at a level he previously thought was
physiologically impossible. So he just didn't know
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what to make of that finding.
He began to study the backgrounds of these
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patients and what he learned is all
of them had endured significant childhood trauma and
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unconsciously and in some instances consciously,
they were over eating his compensation. Yeah,
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I know it's not good to over
eat. Dr floody creates health risks,
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but it's also soothing. It's also
comforting that takes my mind off my
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pain, gets me through the day, gets me through the week, gets
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me through the month, gets me
through the year, gets me through my
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life. And now you Dr Floodier
taking away my only coping mechanism. And
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so I had to drop out of
your program and rapidly regained my weight.
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He was so intrigued by that finding, he said, gosh, if there's
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a statistical correlation between child abuse and
obesity, what else is their correlation with
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So he queried seventeen thousand men and
women participating in an HM in San Diego,
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California, and he asked them if
they had endured UH adversities in any
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of ten categories. So, where
you physically abused as a child, where
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you sexually abused as a child,
were you emotionally abused? Were you emotionally
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neglected? Did you witness domestic violence? Did you have a member of the
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family hospitalized for a psychiatric condition,
and so on and so forth. He
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then, yeah, absolutely, it
is the A score, um. And
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then he calculated the the A score. So if you fit into one categories
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such as physical abusia and a score
of one, if you were in a
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second category such as sexual abusia and
a score of two, and so on
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and so forth. And then he
measured the impact on your physical and emotional
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health, and he found that if
you had an A score of even just
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one, and it didn't matter which
the ten categories you fit into throughout your
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life, you were more likely to
suffer from hundreds of medical and mental health
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conditions, including things we would never
think of being correlated with child abuse,
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such as cancer. Now I might
cancer have a correlation to child abuse a
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couple of reasons. One is,
if you have a high A score,
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you're more likely to smoke or engage
in other behaviors that increase your risk of
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cancer. But even if we isolate
isolate contributory behaviors from the research, enduring
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trauma changes the development of your brain. It weakens your immune system, Rachel.
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Every day all of us are uh
probably developing cancer cells, but for
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most of us, in most days, our immune system is killing them.
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Well, if you have a high
A score, your immune system is weak,
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weakened, and you're more susceptible to
cancer and other diseases. In terms
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of mental health conditions, you're more
likely to be diagnosed with something like depression.
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Fifty for percent of women, thirty
six of men diagnosed with depression of
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very high ACE scores more likely to
be diagnosed with anxiety or any number of
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other mental health conditions, So enduring
trauma has a significant UH plays a significant
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role in a wide variety of medical
and mental health issues. Unfortunately, are
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healthcare system often treats the symptoms.
So you've got anxiety, you got a
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pill for that. You've got a
sleeping disorder, I got a pill for
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that. We we treat the smoke, we ignore the underlying conditions. Completely
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agree with that. Um, The
only things I really find helpful or you
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know E M d R narrow feedback
and like yoga and tai chi. Yeah.
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Yeah, as a wide variety of
evidence based responses to trauma. You
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mentioned d E M d R and
that is one cognitive behavioral therapy maybe another.
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Uh. You mentioned yoga, which
is a good pivot to addressing the
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spiritual impact of trauma. But mindfulness
and spiritual care can be a significant buffer
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against a high A score as well. Okay, Um, what are some
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of the impacts of spiritual abuse when
intertwined with other types of abuse such as
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physical, sexual, emotional. Yeah, is a huge body of research on
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this issue, and yet UH sadly
that research has been often ignored by both
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the secular and faith communities. But
uh we know from a huge body research
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that most not all, but most
children who are uh uh experiencing trauma will
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be spiritually wounded as a result.
Sometimes that happens because the offender incorporates a
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religious theme into the abuse of the
child and convinces uh the child that they
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are somehow complicit or the primary person
to blame for their own trauma. Uh.
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Sometimes though, a child just has
spiritual religious questions. I pray,
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and I pray, and I pray, and I ask God to stop the
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abuse, but the abuse keeps happening. So what does that say about God?
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Ormy or or both? And left
unresolved, these can create um deep
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spiritual wounds, and as the child
grows up, they're often angry at God
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or whoever their understanding of a creator. Maybe they distanced themselves from organized religion,
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but it doesn't mean they're no longer
spiritual, doesn't mean they have abandoned
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what Dr Donald Walker calls the quest
for the sacred or divine. Victor Frankel
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said, it is not suffering that
is unbearable. It is suffering without meaning,
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and so they're still searching to make
meaning out of their uh suffering.
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Uh. They are, in Christian
terms, the lost sheep that both faith
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and secular communities have to learn to
reconnect with and and aid them in in
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coping spiritually with What is intergenerational trauma? Yeah, um m. Intergenerational trauma
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means you you are part of a
community that has experienced trauma at a high
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level. So think of the right
relations in the past year or so of
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boarding schools and indigenous communities in Canada
and the United States, and the uncovering
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of bodies and how many children were
literally tortured in these communities. In the
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United States, you think of our
history of slavery and segregation and the like
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um uh and and so it's impacting
you generation after generation. UM. I
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have one example I can I can
give maybe that that highlights that I have
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a dear friend in the Jewish community
and um um for for a long time,
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uh, she gave me a gentile
name, and then eventually, after
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a year or so friendship, she
asked me if I would use her her
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Hebrew name. And she went on
to say that in her community everybody has
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both a gentile and a Hebrew name, and out there with those who are
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not Jewish. They used the gentile
name out of fear that if God forbid
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that Holocaust returned, We've got to
be able to hide. We've got to
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be able to hide our Judaism,
and we may have uh money hidden in
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our room so that if our bank
accounts whort seas again, that we could
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move quickly. And um, you
know, as someone who's not Jewish,
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I can read about the Holocaust,
I can watch the great PBS documentary that
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that aired not long ago. I
can learn, I can grow my knowledge,
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but it's still not impacting me in
in quite the same way. So
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even generations later, the old stories
of trauma influencing in multiple ways. Um.
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Another example of how you can be
influenced by intergenerational trauma, there is
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epic genetic studies to say that,
um, this could be you know,
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passed down from generation to generation.
There's a study on on animals who had
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certain pain mechanisms as a result of
a certain smell, and then they found
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three or four generations later and that
smell was there. They were still having
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a physical and an emotional reaction to
a certain smell. So things can be
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passed down through our DNA and they
can be influencing us for multiple generations later
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and then connecting it UH to the
ACE research studies have found that UM,
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if you have a high A score
and you're also part of a community that
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has experienced intergeneration intergenerational trauma, it
can exacerbate it can make a worse your
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response to trauma. UM. I
know there's the study about the kids that
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were born from World War two vets
um that were prisoners of war and then
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they had kids. One they had
a kid before, and then they had
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a kid afterwards, and then they
noticed that the kids that were born after
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being prisoner of wars had a lot
more health issue is Yeah. Yeah,
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I mean that's a good example of
the sort of dynamic we need to be
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aware of and begin to pivot and
and and make progress in addressing we do
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to break the chains that integration in
our generational trauma. Yeah. UM,
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let's maybe address it from both a
secular and a faith community. UM.
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As a UH in the faith community, we need to begin to talk about
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it. We need to UM have
a good understanding of what systemic racism is,
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the potential for biases. All human
beings have bias and truly be active
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in exploring our own potential bias.
So um uh. You know Harvard has
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UH an online test. Everybody could
take the Harvard Implicit Association tasks that could
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help you get what potential biases you
have. And once aware of those,
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how do we UM how do we
move in a in a in a better
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direction as well? Be honest and
open and in talking about these issues,
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silence often reinforces racism and inner generational
trauma. I would move from our remove
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from our vocabulary of the concept of
color blindness, because we need to see
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color, we need to see religion, We need to see the diversity of
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our of our communities UM and um
uh. And then I I think we
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need to move away from the concept
of cultural competence and move toward cultural humility,
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recognizing that um uh we we have
room to grow as we understand the
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UM cultures that may be different from
from our from our own. So those
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are some personal things that we can
all UH do to be aware of this
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in the secular comunity. If I'm
working with somebody who has an ACE score
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and UH may also have experienced intergenerational
trauma, I want to make sure I
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make a referral to a mental health
provider or other professionals who are aware of
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both of these things and how they
may um feed off of one another.
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In terms of the faith community,
Jamar uh Tisby wrote a really great book,
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The Color of Compromise, and he
had a number of suggestions for the
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faith community. He suggested, and
his book was focusing primarily on um how
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the United States treated the African American
community. Uh. He said, we
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should teach black history in seminaries and
faith based colleges. We should make sure
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people understand what systemic racism means and
give them concrete examples such as a red
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lighting and everything the federal government did
to keep a black uh emilies from housing
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and how that has influenced a high
rate of poverty to this very day.
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We should have pilgrimages to the National
Civil Rights Museum, the Natural National Lynching
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Memorial uh UM. We should conduct
Bible studies on this topic. Another great
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pilgrimage would be to the Amy Church
in Charleston that endured horrific act of violence
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not long ago. Juneteenth teenth should
be celebrated in our churches. We should
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talk about what that means. We
should have a conversation about reparations as it's
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found in the Bible. So you
know the account of Zakias who wanted to
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give back a whole lot more to
the poor than what he had taken from
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that What would that mean in terms
of repairing our relationships with communities that have
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been wronged and held back. In
the Christian community, there's a lot we
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can learn from the Black Church of
folks. Haven't I watched the PBS documentary
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a couple of years ago. Um, I would encourage them to do that.
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There's a companion book. There's a
lot we can we can learn from
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other communities. So there's a handful
of things that we can do individually and
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do in the secular community and perhaps
begin to talk about and move in a
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better direction in the faith community as
well. Definitely, um, what can
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churches do better with working with inner
generational trauma? You know? UM?
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I forget who recommended it. Maybe
it's to Mark to Be had mentioned him
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a moment ago, or maybe it
was Sa mcaulay and his book Reading While
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Black, But um, someone had
suggested a really uh you know, simple
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concrete things we can do to study
our own church's history on this issue.
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So maybe walking around looking at your
stained stained glass windows, is there any
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diversity there? At Christmas time?
What is the image of Jesus look like?
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Is it Caucasian with a plond hair
that does not reflect accurately what Jesus
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likely looked like? Um? Uh? You know, why is your church
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located where it is in a particular
community? Was it the generations ago you
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wanted to distance yourself from diverse communities? Um? You know in some parts
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of the country, faith communities were
uh, are are working and working living
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in churches that slave labor was used
to construct and so on and so forth.
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So just understanding your own history would
be a really good starting point.
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And again it could be as simple
as walking around and beginning to look at
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the stained glass window and the other
artifacts and your u in your particular community.
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Can the child welfare system address integer
intergery intergenerational trauma? Yeah? Uh?
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The United States Departed with Human Services
has done a couple of really good
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literature reviews. The most recently thing
It was published about a year ago,
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and they do a deep dive on
the research on what causes disproportionality and the
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child welfare system. Uh, And
some of it is systemic. I mentioned
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redlining before, and so we've locked
certain groups into a poverty and help them
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back and being aware of that and
public policy may improve that. So one
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simple example, in nineteen States,
it's still lawful to take a board or
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another object and inflict corporate punishment on
children. And we know from data that
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UH minorities are much more likely to
get paddled in school than anyone else.
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We know boys are more likely to
get a paddled, We know that children
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with disabilities are more likely to get
a paddle. So just ending the policy,
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state sanctioned policy of of hitting children
with the boards in nineteen schools would
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be a step in the right direction. Um uh. And anything we can
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do to to live families out of
poverty would be a good uh public policy
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initiative as as well. Um And
then I mentioned a few minutes ago the
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Harvard implicit bias tast So take a
measurement of that and assess your own biases
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and how it may influence you one
way or the other. When you're dealing
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with diverse cultures, we need,
we need, we need to make sure
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that our multidiscimary teams respond to child
abuse are as diverse as possible, have
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as many perspectives as possible, because
research says, in responding to child abuse,
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if the evidence is overwhelmed NG,
there's no abuse, or if the
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evidence is overwhelming there clearly is abuse, we're probably going to get it right.
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It's in the middle ground where reasonable
minds may differ in culture may come
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into play that we may have disparate
responses. So in those particular cases,
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being as diverse as possible is really
critically important to have multiple UH perspectives in
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play, and research says that will
reduce the potential for a bias. Um.
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But those I mean, those are
a handful of of things. But
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it's you know, it's really complicated. UM. And then I would do
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I guess one other thought, UM, I think it's really important to to
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be engaged in looking at data in
each of our trail welfare systems. So
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what is the demographics of my community? And can I see in the data
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we're collecting that we are overrepresenting or
under representing particular groups? And then UH,
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if we are to have some some
hard questions why we are For prosecutors,
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you really have to pay attention to
UH the sentencing you're recommending and the
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sentencing judges are giving and are we
harsher uh with folks who commit the same
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crime who maybe a minority. Are
there things like that, um that are
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going on that maybe we're just not
paying attention to. I guess to put
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it all under one umbrella, we
need to be proactive and in growing our
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knowledge and assessing our systems and then
working as as a community to to address
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this holistically. How can the church
help with the child? What fair system
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when addressing in intergenerational trauma? You
know, I think there's a lot of
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things the faith community can can do
um um, you know, starting with
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breaking bread. Uh. They're over
nine FC centers in this night, in
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this nation, and they serve over
the population. So virtually every faith community
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has a CC that serves there a
particular community. So reaching out to the
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cecs breaking bread saying what services do
you provide? Which prevention initiatives could you
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help us with? Would you be
willing to review our child protection policies?
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Do you provide any education on basic
trauma research and intergenerational trauma? Who do
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you recommend in terms of evidence based
mental health providers, medical providers and so
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on and so forth? So we
have a really good reservoir of referrals that
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we can make before uh, the
problem arises in our community. Uh.
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And then beyond that, they're promising
practices such as um as a program called
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HALOS that started in trust in South
Carolina. Here in Minnesota we call it
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care and Action where faith communities and
child protection communities partner and if there is
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a child saying foster care as a
need the government can't or won't provide,
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you reach out to the faith partners
uh, and then they figure out what
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they can do about it. So
there was a girl in foster care who
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is asked out for prom Well,
she doesn't have any money for a prom
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dress. Uh, that's not the
sort of thing her foster care providers or
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the social worker could give her.
But the social worker explains it to the
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local faith partners and then they just
send out an email, not giving details,
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but saying, we have a John
foster care has this need. Can
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anybody out And in that particular instance, somebody said, well, I own
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a dress shop. It's on the
house, so we can help her get
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a prom dress. Oh yeah,
Well, I am manager of the best
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seafood restaurant in town. If she
in her day like a lobster, we
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can provide that. Oh yeah,
well, I'm owner of a limousine company.
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It's on the house. I'll give
him my best driver for the evening.
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So just communicating these needs the faith
community can often go beyond what it
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is that the child a knee it's
And then as you get engaged in situations
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like that, the knowledge of the
faith community about trauma is going up markedly.
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There's a lot of common sense,
practical things like that that we can
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do too to move the dial in
a good way. Okay, um,
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what is some of the best advice
you could give somebody who's trying to break
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out of generational trauma? And being
aware of how you're impacted by trauma generally
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and intergenerational trauma up specifically is really
critical because if you're not aware how it's
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impacting you, you may be at
a loss of of understanding your behaviors and
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your emotions and how it may be
impacting your interpretation of events. So just
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being aware of that is really critical. And then to finding appropriate resources to
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help you move in a in a
better direction. And you know, we've
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given some suggestions there, but if, for example, you're reaching out to
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medical or mental health providers specifically asked
them, what are your skills? What
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is your knowledge based on trauma generally
and intergenerational trauma specifically. Um, and
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and really do some homework in advance. And again ccs and the like are
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really good, uh information centers to
to help you find appropriate, appropriate resources.
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The Bible saying about generational curses,
and many people today would think that
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would apply to intergenerational trauma. Yeah, you know, I think the sacred
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texts have a lot to say about
intergenerational trauma. So um, you know,
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Jesus was born into a Jewish family. Uh, he would have understood
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generations of trauma and or the Roman
system and others who would depressed the Jewish
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community. Um. And I think
that shows up and some of his teachings,
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his understandings of family and community is
growing up with. So Jesus,
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I would argue, was trauma inform
generally and also interested the impact of intergenerational
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trauma. Um. You know,
there's the passage from I believe it's Moses
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that you know, things maybe passed
down generation to generation in a good or
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a bad way. Uh. And
there's some lessons there that convey an understanding
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of intergenerational trauma. I think we
do have to break away that it's a
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curse from God. I don't think
the Sacred Text supports that. In fact,
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I think it's just the opposite.
God is deeply compassionate towards the vulnerable
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or the wounded. In the lineage
of Jesus, for example, we're told
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he's the descendant of at least three
sexually exploited women Bathshiba, Tamar, and
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Rahab. And so it's in the
Dna of Christ for the Christian community,
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in the Blood of God to uh
to understand things that have happened in the
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in the past can be influencing us
today. Um, and um, you
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to to really talk about it openly
and how do we move in a in
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a better in a better direction.
Okay, Um, how has this impacted
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your faith while working in this field? Yeah, um, it's a hard
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question. Hey, um, um, you know faith is important to me
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and and healthy spirituality is a buffer, it's a source of resilience and so
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um, you know, when I'm
worn out or fatigued or experiencing vicarious trauma,
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just that drip trip of consulting in
cases of child abuse. A prayer
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and meditation and reading sacred text can
be comforting to me. On the other
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hand, um, since most faith
communities don't have child protection policies, those
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to do for a while below what
I or other experts would recommend. They
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rarely talk about this from the pulp, but they're rarely conducted bibul study.
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A very few faith communities would meet
the same SUS standards for being trum informed.
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And despite all the lawsuits, all
the bad press, we're still not
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going in the direction that we need
to. That can that can wear you
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down and you you begin to question
your faith to these folks really understand God,
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or maybe they do understand God at
some level, but the God that
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they've made is not the one that
exists. Um. You know it can
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impact you. Remember when the news
out of France was hitting the air waves
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and they did a study and my
memories right over three hundred thousand children's actually
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abused in the in the in the
church and France. And I was just
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struck with the number three hundred thousand
and how how can this be? And
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I remember just getting really emotional and
crying that day and walking around the block
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and I remember getting really angry at
God saying, you know, you pick
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the wrong person because obviously I'm not
making a dent here, I'm not making
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an impact, um and and so
it can impact you. But then eventually
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you kind of come back and you
you know, you read job and joke,
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got pretty angry at God, and
God was big enough to take it.
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And some of the psalms and the
prophets get pretty upset with God.
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And then you try to make a
distinction between God and the Church. Right.
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I believe my personal faith is that
God has always on the side of
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the vulnerable, and the suffering and
sacred texts make that clear, even though
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the church, especially the hierarchy is
has not yet often been on the side
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of the of the vulnerable. Um. You know, Elijah thought he was
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completely alone, and God said,
I've preserved a faithful remnant. So I
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looked towards those handful of faith leaders
who are really proactive and reaching out to
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experts and moving in a better direction. Those I think are the faithful remnant,
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and I I want to be in
their company. Do you do for
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self care? I mentioned a couple
of prayer and meditation and reading sacred text
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but Rachel I'm also a huge Johnny
Cash fan, and music can be comforting.
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And I just love the beat of
Johnny Cash. Music sounds like a
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train and um that the beat is
really relaxing to me. In his voice
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I find very comforting because it's it's
ro it's on edge, and yet he
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talks about, you know, difficulties, and he experienced a lot of difficulties
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and he himself had endured trauma and
his in his home. So music can
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be really comforting. Exercise is good. I'm not a big exerciser, but
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I do love to walk, and
so going for long walks is a really
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good thing. And then having this
handful of trusted people you can turn to.
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So my wife is a great partner
to me, and I have a
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handful of really close friends that I
feel I can be vulnerable with when I'm
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struggling. So that's a really good
thing. Um. The last thing I
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would mention on self care, we
at Zyrabuch Zyrabuse actually have this really creative
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program where, uh, periodically we
we get assigned a new body in the
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organization. And so let's say you
were my wellness partner. Um, you
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and I would talk regularly and I
would be proactive and saying, hey,
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what are you doing for self care
and then holding you accountable. They're actually
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doing that, and you would do
the same for me, and then periodically
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I'd get a new UH partner.
And so we're working that throughout the organization
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and really learning how to take care
of of one another. I think that's
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a really promising practice for the field
and H that would be a good thing
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that we should replicate. Okay,
is there anything else you would like to
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add? I haven't asked UM.
You know, for those who may have
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a high score, don't don't feel
that UM that this guarantees you have a
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bad outcome in life. Look at
as look at it as empowering research to
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to understand how you may be impacted
physically, emotionally and spiritually UH, and
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then look for how you may address
that with medical care and mental health care
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and spiritual care. UM. Also
take a look at all the research on
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resilience. You know, a lot
of people with high a score grow up
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very well because they find a carrying
a person in their life who can help
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them, and they begin to think
differently about UM UH. Things in the
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Bible or elsewhere that have been used
in a destructive way. Um, and
401
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so they just they begin to build
a reservoir of resilience and and go in
402
00:34:54.320 --> 00:34:59.920
a better direction. The past is
not always prologue. High escort is not
403
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me, and you're guaranteed to have
a poor outcome, but it is something
404
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to be aware of and to be
proactive in uh in in in working to
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address. Okay, thank you so
much anything and um, I think that's
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it, all right. Thank you
Rachel for talking about these sensitive subjects.
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Thanks for all you're doing. I'm
grateful. We thank you all right,
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guys, thanks for listening. Tune
in every Thursday ten am. Listen on
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your favorite podcast, follow us on
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any questions Reachel us to Regional Recovery
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