When asked if she remembers feeling safe in her home while growing up, Laurie replied, “Never.”
Raised in rural Washington state, her father cut her off from contact with any adults who might have been able to intervene to stop the sexual, physical and emotional abuse she and her siblings suffered.
“He would go into rages over really small things and scream at us, call us names, hit us, psychologically torture us,” said Laurie, who is being identified only by her first name in order to protect her identity.
After running away when she was 17, Laurie said she stole to survive, shoplifting haircutting scissors so she could trim her own bangs and pilfering soup packets easily concealed in coat pockets.
But anyone who met her during her troubled childhood would not have guessed the traumas she was suffering. She said she was shy and withdrawn in her teens. She is not alone. Recent research suggests that such quiet and calm behavior, which often slips under the radar of teachers and counselors, might be a red flag that a girl could become self-destructive as an adult. Researchers are only just beginning to grasp the differences in how girls and boys react to similar traumas.
[For more of this story, written by Virginia Pelley, go to http://america.aljazeera.com/a...ithdrawal-crime.html]
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