The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog by Bruce Perry Page A

forensic interviews myself. At that point we still thought that the crisis would be over in days, so I agreed. I figured it would be an interesting opportunity to learn while simultaneously helping these children. I drove to the cottage to meet a remarkable group of young people.
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    WHEN I ARRIVED one of the Rangers stopped me at the door. He was tall, imposing in his hat, the archetype of Texas law enforcement. He was not impressed by this long-haired man in jeans claiming to be a psychiatrist who had come to help the children. Even after I’d established that I was indeed Dr. Perry, he told me that I didn’t look like a doctor, and further, “Those kids don’t need a shrink. All they need is a little love and to get as far away from here as possible.”
    Ultimately, this Ranger would turn out to be one of the most positive and healing figures in the children’s lives for the weeks they stayed at the cottage. He was calm, good with children, and intuitively seemed to know how to provide a supportive but not intrusive presence. But right then, he was in my way. I said to him, “OK, I’ll tell you what. Do you know how to take a pulse?” I directed his attention to a young girl who was fast asleep on a nearby couch. I told him that if her pulse was less than 100, I would turn around and go home. The normal heart rate range for a child her age at rest is 70-90 beats per minute (bpm).

    He bent down gently to pick up the girl’s wrist, and within moments his face filled with anxiety. “Get a doctor,” he said. “I am a doctor,” I replied. “No, a real doctor,” he said, “This child’s pulse is 160.”
    After reassuring him that psychiatrists are physicians with standard medical training, I began to describe the physiological effects of trauma on children. In this case an elevated heart rate was likely a reflection of the girl’s persistently activated stress-response system. The ranger understood the basics of the fight or flight response; almost all law enforcement officers have some direct experience with this. I noted that the same hormones and neurotransmitters that flood the brain during a stressful event—adrenaline and noradrenaline—are also involved in regulating heart rate, which makes sense since changes in heart rate are needed to react to stress. From my work with other traumatized children, I knew that even months and years after trauma many would still exhibit an overactive stress response. It was a safe bet then that being so close to an overwhelming experience, this little girl’s heart would still be racing.
    The Ranger let me in.
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    THE DAVIDIAN CHILDREN had been released in small groups—two to four at a time—in the first three days following the February raid. They ranged in age from five months to twelve years old. Most were between four and eleven. They came from ten different families and seventeen of the twenty-one were released with at least one sibling. Although some former members have disputed accounts of child abuse among the Davidians (and although I was misquoted in the press to suggest that I didn’t believe that the children were living in an abusive situation), there was never any doubt that the children had been traumatized, certainly by the raid on the compound, but also by their life beforehand.
    One little girl had been released with a note pinned to her clothing that said her mother would be dead by the time the relatives to whom it was addressed got to read it. Another was given a kiss by her mother, handed to an FBI agent and told, “Here are the people who will kill us. I
will see you in heaven.” Long before the compound burned, the Davidian children released to us acted as though their parents (at least one of whom they knew to be alive at the time they left) had already died. When I first met the children, in fact, they were sitting and eating lunch. As I walked