Exploring Violent Youth Crime

Kids Company is a registered charity operating through two street-level centres in south London, as well as offering therapeutic and social work services in over 30 schools. We aim to provide an environment where relationships of empathy and attachment can be fostered between children and trusted adults. The support we offer is tailored to the needs of each individual child. No matter how disturbed a child is, they will never be turned away.

The Baby in the Handle of a Hairdryer

A severely abused young boy described a dream to me in which he was trying to retrieve a tiny baby from the handle of a hairdryer. When I explored with him why the baby was in the hairdryer handle he said: 'it was the only place the infant would be safe and warm.' This was a remarkable dream for a boy who had been subjected to horrific levels of abuse by a violent pedophile group, involving his own father. He was often left naked and freezing whilst being subjected to degrading sexualized punishment.

" The assaults on others he managed by being completely cut off and disconnected from his feelings. "

This is the victim aspect of his experience; sadly he can also be described as a perpetrator. He has a history of violent criminal offences which are on the whole impulsive and demonstrate the level of uncontrollable fury he could reach during which he punched, stabbed and tormented his victims. The assaults on others he managed by being completely cut off and disconnected from his feelings. It is as if he was frozen emotionally, just as he had frozen physically, and a kind of unanimated, vacuous mind waited to be propelled into outrage and fury as a way of living.

When his victims pleaded with him to stop the boy felt even more furious and escalated his attacks. Further exploration revealed that he found the pleading victim repulsive, it reminded him of when he was abused as a young child and begged for mercy. He saw in the victim his victimized self reflected back at him and he had nothing but a sense of despise towards the child within him and by proxy towards his victim; that is why he could never access empathy and as he failed to summon up sorrow he could not feel remorse.

Much of our therapeutic work at Kids Company had been about finding and reclaiming the child in him who originally was in part destroyed by his own carers, but then, was through self-hatred obliterated by the boy himself. It is precisely the inability to take care of his own baby parts that he was able to remain so lethally dangerous. The baby in the hairdryer handle is a start, there is no trust in an adult to give warmth and nurture, but the handle of a hairdryer for him was an alternative womb in which the baby could be kept safe.

" The best intervention must primarily reside in prevention. "

Many of the children Kids Company works with present with more than sixteen significant traumatic events sealed in this way. The abuse is stored, so is the revenge. The toddler cannot prevent being penetrated by a grown man but the desire to harm the man is memorized and the assault leaves the child with a profound energetic imbalance. He has unwittingly become the container for another man's hateful action. He cannot return the hatred to where it belongs and in doing so redress the balance like a Judge would do for a victim in punishing the perpetrator.

The best intervention must primarily reside in prevention. Therefore the strengthening of the child protection systems so that issues of abuse and neglect are robustly dealt with is the primary defense against violent criminality.

In Britain, on average, some 550,000 children a year are referred to Child Protection systems and only approximately 30,000 on average are placed on the Child Protection Register. This is in a country which is economically very advanced. Developing countries often compensate and protect against child abuse by involving the extended family or the wider community as collective carers. The Scandinavian countries have barely any extreme violence from adolescents and when they do, it is treated as a child mental health issue.

" 90% reduced their involvement in criminal activity; 91% reintegrated into education and 95% have improved relationships. "

At Kids Company we have developed the community model enabling this healing process to be mobilized using a substitute home structure at street-level which young people attend but don't sleep in. Our staff collectively repair severely traumatized adolescents. An independent evaluation over three years by the University of London demonstrates that 90% had reduced their involvement in criminal activity; 91% were reintegrated into education and 95% have improved relationships.

As a society we can change things for the better, but will our politicians have the moral courage to invest in the well-being of children in a meaningful way, giving to other children what they expect for their own child? Only when we get child protection right will we get the results we wish for at the Criminal Justice end.

Maybe then, fifteen-year-old boys who have been abused won't think the only safe place for a baby is the handle of a hairdryer.

Camila Batmanghelidjh
Founder, Kids Company

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