Paul Bass Photo
An abused girl's tape-recorded voice filled the room. "I'm scared,"
she told a New Haven policewoman. Then, after the recording ended,
Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (pictured) made a pitch to rescue a model
program that trained the policewoman and other cops nationwide alongside
child shrinks to break the cycle of violence.
It all made for an emotional start to the week for some 50 cops,
social workers, psychiatrists and politicians who gathered at La Piazza
Bistro Monday morning to discuss the future of a New Haven-based center
that helps children who experience or witness violent crime.
La Piazza's owner, Gideon Gebereyesus, provided the breakfast as
DeLauro and others launched a campaign to raise $400,000 in two months
to keep the National Center for Children Exposed to Violence going
strong. The center received $1.1 million from the federal government
this past year. Congress this week votes on a budget that completely
eliminates the money for this coming year.
Then-Police Chief Nicholas Pastore started the program in 1991 with
the late Donald Cohen of the Yale Child Study Center. At the scene
of a shooting one night, Pastore noticed the victim's young children
bundled together on a couch, terrorized, ignored by all the activity
around them. He realized they needed help, immediately. That they
were in danger of following a life of violence, too, without that
help.
Thus was born a remarkable partnership between the New Haven police
force and Yale's child psychologists. Teams of Yale shrinks and city
cops trained together about how to help kids exposed to violence.
The program was a hit with the cops and the community; the U.S. Congress
put up the money to spread it to 14 other cities across the country.
The resulting National Center, based here in New Haven, has also helped
authorities deal with children's trauma in the wake of Columbine,
9-11 and Hurricane Katrina.
DeLauro described trying to save the program's money in the current
budget process. In public life, she said, there are some things "you
have to do." And there are some things you do because "they're
the right thing to do," that "engage your mind, your heart...
to make a change in society." For her, she said, supporting this
program fits in the latter category. She said she would still try
at the last minute this week to convince her colleagues to restore
the money.
Saving that, she joined a pitch for people to pony up contributions
of $1,000 or more in the next two months to keep all the child clinicians
and social workers on the beat doing follow-up visits with kids exposed
to trauma. (Send contributions to The National Center for Children
Exposed to Violence, Yale Child Study Center, 230 South Frontage Rd.,
P.O. Box 207900, New Haven CT 06520-7900. For info, call 1-877-49-NCCEV.)
DeLauro told of a conversation she had with a young New Haven girl
who regularly encountered gunfire on her way walking to school.
How do you handle that? DeLauro asked her.
The girl closed her eyes and threw her hands to either side of her
head. "I push it away," she told DeLauro.
"We have to do something so this youngster doesn't have to 'push
it away,'" DeLauro told the crowd Monday morning. "This
is a program that halts the cycle of trauma and violence. This ought
to be the kind of program the federal government embraces. This is
a success story here."
DeLauro spoke after organizers aired a video showing the New Haven
police and Yale clinicians working together to help children at the
scene of drug busts and in other tense situations. Cops (including
Assistant Chief Bryan Norwood, pictured) spoke in the video about
how they'd rather not have to continue chasing after problems in homes,
and how this program helps them prevent future problems as kids grow
up and have to deal with the trauma they've experienced or witnessed.
"The way to prevent [the cycle of violence repeating itself]
is to make a change in someone's life," Sgt. Julie Esposito of
the narcotics division was quoted saying after a scene in which she
reassured a baby at the scene of an arrest and handed her to her grandmother.
In one scene, Lt. Everett Nicholas fought back tears as he told the
story of Marisol, a girl he'd gotten to know in a violence-plagued
section of Fair Haven. One day Nichols saw her in front of the house.
She was distraught, shaking her head. She wouldn't talk, but she gave
him the clear message that he shouldn't go in the house. So Nichols
sent officers to the rear, where they found two men hiding, armed,
ready to shoot them. One of the young men was Marisol's brother.
"To her credit, she didn't want to snitch on her brother,"
Nichols said. And "she didn't want me to die." She prevented
a problem that could have had grave consequences.
The scene that hushed the room came toward the end. In it, Sgt. Petisia
Adger was heard talking with a 10 year-old girl who had been assaulted
by a stranger. Adger reassured the girl that the man was being arrested
and that some people at Yale were going to help her now. "I'm
scared," the girl told Adger.
Her disembodied voice left a pause hanging in the air as the video
ended, accompanied by a sense that while lots of causes are important
to support, this one cannot be consigned to the "just another
campaign" bin that people may or may not have the time or money
to make succeed.
