Brandi Azure could feel the love fade from her family on days her parents drank.
What happened on one of those joyless days left a deep scar on her memory, ever-present among a constellation of scars from a childhood spent in poverty with parents stuck in the haze of addiction.
It was a Saturday gathering at her uncle's house in West Fargo where the adults were boozing. An argument erupted, and her uncle started choking her aunt.
Brandi's dad, seeing his sister being attacked, grabbed a knife and stabbed Brandi's uncle in the torso repeatedly, enough to put him in serious condition and require surgery.
Brandi, just 6 years old, saw the violence unfold.
"That was the first traumatic experience I ever had in my life," she said.
Sadly, more trauma was in store for Brandi, a member of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe who grew up in Fargo. She's now 26 years old and knows the traumatic experiences she suffered throughout her rocky upbringing, with stints in foster care, mental health facilities and juvenile court, are not unusual among American Indian youth.
In 2014, the Justice Department reported that 22 percent of native children experience post-traumatic stress — the same rate as veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Trauma is an issue that spills into any place that deals with kids, such as schools and social service agencies. Yet one institution that experts believe has a great deal of power to help traumatized youth is the court system. And judges, as leaders in the courtroom and community, are uniquely positioned to foster healing among the kids and families that come before them, said Alicia Summers, program director for research and evaluation at the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, a nonprofit group in Nevada.
Judges "have an opportunity to ensure that the correct questions are being asked, that families are being sent to the correct services, that someone is addressing their underlying trauma," Summers said, adding that such an approach to traumatic stress can help prevent kids from re-entering the system and end cycles of violence in families.
[For more of this story, written by Archie Ingersoll, go to http://www.inforum.com/news/41...ins-challenge-courts]
Comments (1)