[dogs barking]
[wind blows sharply]
- Reyna Saldaña: I was supposed to be in prison.
And I'm not.
My mom struggled a lot in her life
with a lot of drug abuse.
I think I started kind of falling apart a little bit,
trying to find some connection.
- Narrator: Reyna Saldaña
says she tells her personal story
so people can understand
what happens because of trauma.
- Saldaña: I was sexually abused when I was younger,
before I was adopted and then, again, after I was adopted.
- Tim Grove: The prevalence
of the occurrence
of kids who experience
overwhelming unsupported stress
is far greater than all of us would want to appreciate.
- Lynn Sheets: A child who's been traumatized may have
that kind of fight, flight, or freeze response.
So, the fight are aggressive external behaviors.
So, they may be impulsive in class, they may act out,
they may approach others and be physical,
and it may be outbursts.
That's kind of externalizing.
Some of those kids can have the flight,
where they withdraw.
- Saldaña: Shut down was always the biggest thing.
I shut down and... a lot
and I--
This wall that I built
was an aggressive one.
I would go into a room that was empty
and I'd pretty much demolish things.
I'd have people that would block the door, they'd corner me,
or they'd try and get me to not leave,
and then, I would have an outburst.
And they would be like, "You're hurting people.
You're destroying things."
- Narrator: Today, Reyna finds healing
in riding and caring for horses.
As a child, she describes feeling confused and alone.
- Saldaña: Yeah.
'Cause I would try to do something good,
or like...
And then, it would just all come crashing down,
as soon as I had, like, one outburst.
[heels click on floor]
- Narrator: Dr. Lynn Sheets is Director
of Child Abuse Programs
at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin.
She says in addition to fight or flight,
which Reyna exhibited,
there's another typical response to trauma.
- Lynn Sheets: Then you have this freeze
that might be hard to recognize because sometimes
it's somebody who's dissociating.
Basically, they're no longer with you,
as far as they may be looking at you,
but not really responding.
- Narrator: Alisha Fox says she remembers that feeling.
- Alisha Fox: When I was 14, it was bad.
I'd get flashbacks, nightmares.
I would space out.
I'd sit in class and four hours later,
I'd still be in the same seat.
Like, "Oh, I was supposed to go to lunch.
Like, I guess that didn't happen."
- Narrator: Experts in trauma say these kinds of behaviors
often result from
what are called "adverse childhood experiences"
or ACEs for short.
They are specific childhood traumas
now recognized as resulting in
toxic stress that damages the brain.
- Grove: There are physical impacts.
There are neurophysiological impacts.
There are social and emotional impacts that are produced.
Tim Grove is chief clinical officer at SaintA,
a child welfare agency in Milwaukee.
He says physical and psychological impacts are worse
the more ACEs a person has experienced.
Ten such adverse experiences
are measured to result in a score
ranging from low to high.
Surveys find that 58% of Wisconsin adults
report growing up experiencing at least one ACE.
14% have four or more.
Alisha Fox reports an ACE score
of nine.
- Fox: So, when I was four to fourteen,
I got sexually-abused and raped by my father for 10 years.
And then, after that, I was diagnosed with severe PTSD,
and in and out of mental hospitals,
and suicidal at times.
- Narrator: Alisha says she recounts her painful past
without tears
because today she is strong,
a survivor. - Fox: C'mon.
- Grove: We see kids who have PTSD outcomes
or trauma outcomes
that are similar to what Vets experience
after three tours of duty.
- Narrator: The impacts of even extreme neglect
can be seen on brain scans.
- Sheets: What we have here is a normal child here on the left,
and a child here on the right
who has experienced extreme neglect.
And so, what you can see here is the obvious:
that head is much smaller.
The reason why is that--
it's just the brain itself is smaller.
- Narrator: Abuse that results in the fear response
causes additional harm.
- Chuck Price: Your brain then
is constantly dispersing cortisol all the time
which it's meant to do that
for short periods of time.
But if it's constant, it impacts the brain.
[keyboard clicking]
- Narrator: Waupaca County Health and Human Services
Director Chuck Price doesn't see the effects on a CAT scan,
but in the struggles he sees within families.
- Price: Your neural pathways get set on certain ways
and if you've been raised in an environment of--
of a lot of trauma or adversities
or it's consistent and constant,
you're going to be set up more in survival mode
where everything is "fight or flight."
And, "How do I-- How do I protect myself?"
and the brain sets up pathways like that.
- Tammy Fry: I used to be, like, a bad kid.
But that's only because how I've been treated.
I've never been treated with love
or been taught what's right.
I never been...
I never had, like, the mother and father that I should have.
- Narrator: Tammy Fry has her own high ACE score
and has worked through her teenage years
to control her angry outbursts.
- Eileen Fredericks: She had so much trauma
with her mom dying,
and then her being sec-- or, you know, abused by her father,
and then being adopted by a biological aunt.
- Fry: My mom passed away in a car accident
when I was three-and-a-half.
And then, I lived with my dad.
My dad, he was abusive.
Then my aunt took me in.
She said that she couldn't handle me
when she locked me in my room.
As, like, like, she treated me basically like an animal.
And then, after that, she said she couldn't handle me
and put me into foster care.
- Narrator: Like many children of trauma,
Tammy ended up in the system.
The child welfare system
and then
the juvenile justice system.
- Fredericks: I see this with a lot of kids.
It's like they kind of give up
where they just feel like,
"I'm going to test everybody
to see if everybody is gonna give up on me."
And then, the testing does lead to everybody giving up because
it's very difficult.
- Narrator: For her part, Reyna Saldaña
says she could tell
people around her had all but given up,
only adding to her pain and isolation.
- Saldaña: I always thought people always saw
the bad before they saw the good.
Like, I could never do anything right.
So, as a kid,
I guess I felt really trapped, you know, like, where...
like, who could understand that, you know?
And there wasn't really anybody, you know.
So, like...
- Narrator: Isolation and sadness and anger
often not cured by being removed from home.
- Fry: In foster homes,
like, they'll just put you in there with anybody.
They don't care.
So, like, if you got
anger issues, or depression, anxiety,
or any other thing, like,
they'll just put you in there with somebody else.
Like, because I've always gotten into fights
so that's why I've been bounced around.