[road traffic and water current]
♪ ♪
- Bonita Hahn: Alisha came to live with me
when she was 16.
She was living with Michelle.
- Narrator: After being abused
by her father for 10 years,
Alisha Fox's grandmother gained custody of her.
Alisha's Aunt Shelly lives in the same house.
They say it took four years
for Alisha to be able to communicate with them.
- Hahn: It was hard for us
because Alisha couldn't express herself
so I-- I remember one night
when she was having
some bad night terrors
or PTSD was going on
or flashbacks
and she was curled up in her bed in the fetal position.
And I-- She just wouldn't speak or anything.
And that was when I first got her and I--
I literally didn't know what to do.
So, I just pulled a chair from the kitchen
and pulled it next to her bed
and just sat there in case she would get up or need me or...
I mean, so sometimes, it's just a matter of being there,
even if you don't think you're making a difference,
just have to be there.
- Fox: I knew even in my darkest times that they were there.
I'm not concerned about whether somebody is gonna hurt me
or whether I'm not gonna have food on the table
or whatever the grave situation might be.
- Hahn: Okay. [laughter] - Fox: I can go home.
I go home to my dog and to my family.
It's a loving environment and that's where people can strive.
When they have connections, they strive
and when they don't...
they don't get their needs met--
and my needs are met and times 10.
So, that's where...
That's where healing can begin.
That's where your recovery story can happen.
- Fry: So I've probably been in over ten foster homes,
group homes: three.
I've been in the juvenile shelter home
like three, four times,
and then, the detention center,
I was there probably a lot.
[ducks quacking]
- Narrator: After her mother died
and she was removed from her home
because her father abused her.
Tammy Fry had gotten in enough trouble
that the state recommended
she be sent to the juvenile prison for girls.
The judge in her case did not send her.
Instead, she went to one last foster home.
She is now aged out.
- When I get stressed out sometimes I just pray to my mom.
I don't know.
Makes me feel better.
- Narrator: Tammy has advice
for adults who work with children
who have experienced trauma.
- Fry: Be mindful
and respect what the kids have been through.
And just kind of work with them and not give up on them.
Give them chances.
Work with them-- not just throw 'em back out
to be placed in another home.
[speaking "Motherese"] - What are you looking at? Yeah.
- Narrator: Tammy has started her own home and family.
[laughing, making kissy noises]
She recently had a baby,
naming the girl after her late mother.
- Fry: My mom
is part of her.
I really do believe that.
I want her to have
the life that I never lived,
that I never had.
That's...
She's my everything.
I would do anything for her.
- Saldaña: Sometimes, when I'm really confused
or I'm really stressed out.
Just being around a horse is, like, really helpful to me
because...
they put me in check, I guess,
with understanding myself.
- Narrator: Reyna Saldaña says she learned more
about how to find calm,
be able to pull herself back from violent outbursts
after coming to understand her trauma--
trauma resulting from abuse and then,
repeated placements where she was physically restrained,
including the juvenile prison for girls.
- Saldaña: Speaking about it
sometimes is really raw for me
because I haven't even really worked through
a lot of it, you know.
- Narrator: But with the help of caring adults,
Reyna worked through enough of it
that she graduated from high school
and never entered the adult prison system.
- Saldaña: What? - She says when she was a child
no one seemed to understand
her behavior was the result of trauma.
Today she understands
she is resilient.
[Saldaña getting choked up] - I don't think giving up is really an option [sniffles]
because I feel like I have a lot to say
that other people may not have experienced.
And I really hope that, like,
[sniffles] if I keep going, and pushing through my things,
I can help those other kids.
Like, the other kids I roomed with in these facilities
and the other kids I watched be restrained,
when there was no need for it but I knew that,
but the facility didn't.
-Saldaña: Awesome, good girl!
I started doing speaking and being able to say my story.
It took me a while to even decide to do that
'cause I was like, "No.
"No, I don't want people to know.
I don't even want to think about it."
I am still today as an adult working through things
that happened to me when I was 10.
[speaks to horse] We got this.
- Mitchell: These children:
they want to make us happy;
they want to be proud.
But they just need somebody to take the time to slow it down,
to make sure they get things they need.
I though we gonna eat some fried fish together.
- Narrator: As for the 16-year-old in so much trouble
who appeared in his courtroom...
- Mitchell: So much pain, so much pain, so much brokenness.
- Narrator: Judge Everett Mitchell just wishes someone,
anyone had taken the time
so much earlier to see the trauma
and help set the boy and others like him
on a better path.
- Mitchell: I really have embraced the idea
like Frederick Douglass said,
"It is far easier to build strong children
than to repair broken men."