Pakistan Journal of Criminology Volume 8, No.2. Apr 2016, pp.

12-24
12

Trauma Experiences in the Backgrounds of Violent Young

Offenders
Professor Gwyneth Boswell
Abstract:
There is growing evidence of the impact of childhood and adolescent trauma on
young people across the life course. This article focuses on trauma in the
backgrounds of violent juvenile offender groups, on which the author has
conducted research over the last 20 years. It contends that such trauma frequently
goes unidentified, and requires proper recognition from professionals and policy-
makers in the process of delivering criminal justice.

Key words:
Childhood trauma/violence/violent young offenders/abuse/loss/age of criminal
responsibility/post-traumatic stress disorder/PTSD

Introduction:
Trauma in childhood may result from a range of possible negative
experiences such as violence, bullying, abuse, loss, disaster, whether in the family,
in schooling, or in wider society. These experiences may be direct or witnessed.
Contemporary examples include school shootings, gang violence, terrorist attacks,
earthquakes and floods, aeroplane crashes, and longstanding physical and sexual
abuse. The ensuing trauma may constitute a one-off reaction or, if unaddressed, a
long-lasting chronic condition with far-reaching effects. Responses to it include
intense feelings of fear, loss of trust in others, a reduced sense of personal safety,
guilt and shame, with the possibility of damage to the brain and nervous system,
relationship difficulties, engagement in high-risk behaviours, and increased
involvement with child welfare and juvenile justice systems (National Child
Traumatic Stress Network, 2015).
The definition of a child varies across the world, but is most frequently
classified as being anyone under the age of majority, normally eighteen years. The
age of criminal responsibility, however, may range from 7 years, for example in
many Asian Countries, to 18 years, for example in many South American countries.
Within Europe, where the average age is 14 years, England and Wales has one of
the lowest ages of criminal responsibility at 10 years. This despite evidence to the
effect that cognitive and psychosocial development, including the ability fully to
understand the difference between right and wrong (known as the principle of doli
13 Professor Gwyneth Boswell
incapax) may not be complete in some young people until at least early adulthood
(Erikson, 1968) Thus:

We often expect children to think like adults when they are not yet capable of
doing so.
(Child Development Institute, 2015)

The question which has occupied much of my working life as an academic has been
‘Why do children and young people become violent?’ (Boswell, 2000). The process
of interviewing many such young people has pointed to the necessity to identify and
work with the trauma experiences in their backgrounds, such as abuse and loss,
which they so frequently recount. This is particularly so in the face of increased
emphasis by successive Governments, and indeed by society world-wide, on the
need for public protection. It is, thus, important first to invoke the wider
professional, societal and global contexts for developing a greater understanding of
trauma and violence in young people.

The structural context of violence across the world:

Violence and murder perpetrated by children and young people became
high profile in the UK during the 1990s largely as a result of the murder, in
February 1993, of two-year old James Bulger at the hands of two 10 year old boys.
The blurred video image of this innocent toddler, hand in hand with his two young
killers as they led him through a Liverpool shopping precinct to his ultimate death,
is one which will probably remain in the minds of all who saw it for the rest of their
lives. At that time, little attempt was made to seek an explanation for the two 10
year-olds’ behaviour. It seemed sufficient for the media to apply the label ‘evil’. It
appeared acceptable for any hint of the welfare philosophy, applied to children
under the age of 14 years in most other European countries, to be firmly supplanted
by the notions of punishment and retribution. It seemed uncontentious, as David
James Smith reported in his book ‘The Sleep of Reason’ (1994) for the trial judge,
when passing sentence, to threaten them by carrying into the Courtroom a black cap
and white gloves - the traditional artefacts of the death penalty.
Thus, these two young children, publicly named and reportedly severely
traumatised, came to be sentenced to detention during Her Majesty’s Pleasure
under Section 53 (1) of the Children and Young Persons Act 1933 with a minimum
of 15 years to serve, longer than the period they had yet lived, though this was
eventually reduced to 8 years by the European Court. There was little recognition of
them as children who prior to their offence would normally have been seen as
separate, vulnerable beings with distinct needs, and a complete absence of
information about the litany of abuse and loss in their backgrounds which David
 Pakistan Journal of Criminology
14
James Smith (1994) and Blake Morrison (1997), both serious journalists, later
recounted in their books about the case.
Cases of young people killing other young people around the world which
came after the Bulger case have included the Colorado school killings in the US by
two 11-year olds; the brutal gang-rape and killing of a 14-year old schoolgirl in
South Africa by a 15-year old; and the gang-rape and murder of a 23-year old
woman on a bus in India by a 17-yr old boy and 4 adults. All of these produced
public outcries similar to those in the UK, and petitions for the return of the death
penalty in South Africa, which Nelson Mandela had abolished at the end of
apartheid. In India, the adults did receive the death penalty, though the 17-year old
received 3 years' detention. In a study of child violence in South Africa, Wandile
Zwane observed that:
The tendency now is to emphasise the lurid details of the brutal acts committed
by children. Glaringly missing from the media reports are the reasons behind
this type of violent behaviour. (Zwane, 2000:2)
Of course, the reasons for violence and murder by youngsters vary
enormously in relation to their individual circumstances and their respective
cultures. In Rwanda, where the author advised on research about the feasibility of
the ‘gacaca’ mediation process for young people still in prison for genocide crimes,
both the young people and the communities to which it was proposed they would
return remained traumatised and fearful. But whatever the circumstances, if we are
seriously to consider the prevention of such violence by the next generation, we
need to examine much more closely the nature of the problem about asking this
question ‘Why?’ Indeed, it behoves any professional working with these young
people first to consider the wide-ranging backdrop of violent images to which we as
individuals and societies are exposed in our daily lives.
In parallel with images of violence perpetrated by children have developed
other powerful media projections of violence perpetrated upon children in the form
of child abuse - physical, sexual, emotional, or combinations thereof. In the UK and
elsewhere, these consistently impact upon the populace as a consequence of public
inquiry either because of child death within the family; or the mismanagement of
suspected child abuse; or abusive practices in children’s homes. According to the
particular circumstances, those with professional responsibility, notably in recent
times Children’s Services, have been criticised either for intervening too much or
intervening too little. Public feeling seemingly runs as high about the increase of
state interference in domestic and family life as it does about that same state’s
failure to prevent the death or abuse of a child. This represents an awesome
challenge for professionals both in the social care and criminal justice sectors. The
nub of this challenge is to remain abreast of the art and science of risk assessment
15 Professor Gwyneth Boswell
and management, to ensure that they are always supported in their practice by their
employing organisations, and to be able to stand their ground in the face of public
and political pressure. This is not easy but, with training and experience, it can be
done.
The contemporary primacy of violence is also demonstrated across the
world in military & religious architecture, statues, art, music, press and television
coverage of more than 300 wars since the end of World War II (Boswell, 2009).
This has become particularly engraved on 21st-century consciousness through
media coverage of the military conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, the conflicts
arising from the Arab Spring in Libya, Egypt and Syria, and the advent of the
Islamic State (formerly ISIS). Further, violence is enshrined in the response of a
range of justice systems to criminalised anti-social behaviour - that is to say torture
and other forms of physical retribution, and capital punishment - all of which, in
some countries, may be applied to children and young people, despite wide
ratification of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UN
General Assembly, 1989). Similarly, Save the Children’s report ‘The Small Hands
of Slavery’ (1997) pointed out that mental and physical violence to victims of child
prostitution and child labour is to be seen not only in Asia, the Far East, Central and
South America, as popularly imagined, but right across the so-called ‘developed’
world. Physical violence between family members is frequently seen as normal for
many societies (Gelles & Straus, 1988).
At national and international levels, then, it can be argued that the cultural
legitimacy of violence is reinforced to successive generations of youngsters and
that, in some contexts, this in itself can be traumatising. It certainly produces
confusing models and messages for a young person moving through developmental
stages and trying to gain a sense of identity and morality, against a complex
backcloth of interacting sociological, cultural, psychological and other influences.

Trauma as a background to later violence:

In England and Wales, during the 1990s, the author undertook two surveys
for the Prince’s Trust. The first was a small-scale investigation of the experiences
and needs of 25 Section 53 offenders (Boswell 1991, 1996). These were children
and young people between the ages of 10 and 17 inclusive, detained for murder and
other grave crimes under Sections 53 (1) and (2) of the Children and Young
Persons Act 1933. A completely unanticipated by-product of this survey was the
discovery of evidence in both young people’s accounts and their case records that
50% of the sample had a background of some kind of child abuse – that is to say
physical, sexual, emotional, organised/ritual or combinations thereof. Related staff
who were interviewed estimated that the true figure could be as high as 90%. The
other phenomenon revealed in this survey was the high prevalence of traumatic loss
 Pakistan Journal of Criminology
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in the shape of bereavement and separation from family which the young people
had not been helped to understand or come to terms with.
The next step, when research funding became available, was to survey a
much higher proportion of cases, to try and establish a reliable figure for the
prevalence of abuse and loss in the lives of the Section 53 population, drawing on a
statistically significant number of detainees. At the time, the population of Section
53s of all ages, including those who had progressed to the adult prison system,
numbered 615 of whom 584 were male and 31 female. (The Department of Health
did not monitor ethnic origin during that period). The research method was to
examine a random sample of 200 centrally-held files, to note down professionally
confirmed evidence in them of child abuse and loss and, where this evidence was
partial or ambiguous, to interview the young people themselves about these issues.
A total of 72% of respondents was found to have experienced abuse, defined
according to Government Department guidelines (Home Office et al., 1991). This
was divided as follows: emotional (28.5%); sexual (29%); physical (40%);
organised/ritual (1.5%); combinations of abuses (27%).
A total of 57% had experienced significant loss via bereavement (21%) or
cessation of contact, usually with a parent (43%) and, in a small number of cases,
both. In only 18 out of 200 cases studied were there no personally reported
evidences of abuse and/or loss. In other words, the total number of Section 53
offenders who had experienced one or both phenomena was 91%.
The total number who had experienced both abuse and loss was 35%,
suggesting that the presence of a double childhood trauma may be a potent factor in
the lives of violent young offenders. Indeed there seems little doubt that child abuse
and childhood experience of loss, when no effective opportunity is provided for the
child to make sense of these experiences, constitutes unresolved trauma which is
likely to manifest itself in some way at a later date. Many children become
depressed, disturbed, violent or all three, and as the American Psychiatric
Association reports, girls tend to internalise and boys to externalise their responses
(American Psychiatric Association, 2013).
Not untypical of this group was Darren, aged 32 who, when interviewed,
had so far served 15 years, 11 of them in adult prisons, for grievous bodily harm
and attempted rape, and recounted a childhood which included the loss of his father
when he was 3, regular beatings from that time by his mother, sexual abuse by his
mother’s lover, being locked in a dark cellar with rats, and sexual abuse followed
by suicide attempts after he was placed in a children’s home. George, aged 23 at
the time of interview, was sentenced to be detained during Her Majesty’s Pleasure
for the physical and sexual assault of a woman belonging to a religious group he
had joined for support; his attack caused serious and lasting injury. At the time of
17 Professor Gwyneth Boswell
interview he had served eight years, the last two in an adult prison. His father had
died when he was 5, and his stepfather subsequently physically and sexually abused
him. His case is not unusual, in that this early abusive and traumatic background
had not come to light before his very serious offence, despite professional (and in
his case longstanding) involvement with the family. Had abuse been recognised and
the child and his family managed differently as a result, it is possible that the long-
term outcome not just for George, but for many of these young men, might have
been different.
These cases are not recounted to suggest that child abuse or loss are the
only potential causes of violent offending – indeed cause is notoriously difficult to
establish - nor is it to suggest that every abused child becomes an offender, rather
that abuse is sufficiently prevalent among such offenders to be regarded as a key
traumatic factor which involved professionals should have in mind as they engage
with children and young people, along the dichotomous welfare/justice continuum.
Recurringly, research evidence reminds us of the seemingly paradoxical but
nevertheless close relationship between the offender’s own victimisation at some
point in their lives, and their later offending. Examples of this include research in
America on problem behaviour in abused and neglected children grown up (Widom
& White, 1997); the Edinburgh longitudinal study of youth transitions and crime
by Smith & McVie (2003); the research review of risk and protective factors for
violent behaviour in youth, conducted by Lösel & Bender (2006); the work of
Wikstrom and Butterworth (2006) on lifestyles of those involved in adolescent
crime; the study by Jacobson et al. (2010) of 200 young people in custody; and the
biographical narrative interview study of violent young people in secure settings by
Grimshaw et al. (2012). These kinds of backgrounds of victimisation were also
almost universally present in the small number of young women in our sample.
A third study of those sentenced for grave crimes who, by then, had become
Section 90 & 91 offenders under the Powers of the Courts (Sentencing) Act 2000,
was conducted for England & Wales' Youth Justice Board (YJB) in 2003 (Boswell,
Wedge & Price, 2003). Based on Prison Service Order 4950 (HM Prison Service,
2000) which stated that regimes for those under 18 should do all they could to
positively motivate young people via individually tailored programmes, three
enhanced YOI regimes for vulnerable detainees had been set up, and our research
team evaluated the effectiveness of one of them. The findings were largely
positive, but following on from the identification of links between trauma and later
violent behaviour in the Prince’s Trust study, we worked with a psychologist to
administer a test for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). All 24 young men on
this particular enhanced unit, unsurprisingly were found to have damaged and
disturbed backgrounds and we wanted to know if PTSD was or had been
experienced as a result.
 Pakistan Journal of Criminology
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The Test for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder at that time was the PTSD-1. It
took the form of an interview which has demonstrated very high internal
consistency and test-retest reliability. It was devised to correspond closely to the
American Psychiatric Association’s (1980) diagnostic standards and criteria for
PTSD (DSM-III) though both the criteria and PTSD testing instruments have
increased in sophistication since that time. The first question in the PTSD-1 asks
whether the respondent has experienced an unusual, extremely distressing event
(the first criterion for a PTSD diagnosis). Answers in the affirmative then triggered
more detailed questions in 4 sections which represent the remaining four criteria for
PTSD – which are that the traumatic event is persistently re-experienced; the
person persistently avoids stimuli associated with the trauma, or experiences a
numbing of general responsiveness; that persistent symptoms of increased arousal
are experienced; and that symptoms must have persisted for 28 days before
diagnosis.
It is generally acknowledged that these criteria require further development,
particularly within non-military and non-natural disaster contexts. The test authors,
indeed, suggest that some of the cut-off points may be too rigid, and that ‘users
could substitute lower and higher cut-off points if desired’ (Watson et al., 1991:
181). In relation to young people, Young (1990) developed a set of early
maladaptive schemata to interact with unresolved PTSD symptoms. These
schemata specifically allow for links between major childhood traumata and
psychological morbidity in later life. Of import, in relation to the YJB study, are
those maladaptive schemata which include subjugation, vulnerability to harm,
emotional deprivation, abandonment or loss, mistrust and defectiveness or
unlovability (often experienced by abused children). As noted in the previous
study of this offender group: ‘it seems entirely possible that such interactions at
some point along the continuum between PTSD and psychological morbidity could
manifest themselves in ways which include violent offending’ (Boswell, 1996:
116).
The research team was able to interview 21 of the 24 young men on the
enhanced unit on 2 occasions with an average gap of around 9 months. One fifth, or
4 respondents scored positive for current PTSD at first interview, but only 2 of
these still scored positive by the second interview. The traumata cited by this group
were: being bullied; military conflict; terrifying dreams; and, for one, the violent
offence he himself had committed. Three others scored positive for ‘lifetime’
PTSD – that is to say, PTSD which has been experienced previously, but is not
current. Two of this group also cited their own violent offences; the third cited
military conflict in his country of origin. In respect of the issue of rigid cut-off
points, it is also worthy of mention that if they had scored higher on a single
indicator, three other respondents would have reached the level of ‘current’ PTSD
19 Professor Gwyneth Boswell
diagnosis at first interview, and three would have reached the level of ‘lifetime’
diagnosis. Other traumata cited by those for whom PTSD was not found included
further examples of bullying and violent racism, and witnessing the deaths of
family members or friends. However, many of these experiences were still
categorised as problematic in their lives by these young men.
Although by no means all cases of violent young offenders neatly fit into
the criteria for PTSD, these findings generally beg questions as to whether these
young people, detained for violent offences and for long periods, should routinely
be screened for PTSD and what, if a positive diagnosis results, should then be done
to address this situation. Two related incidences of trauma in the backgrounds of
young people who had committed murder will serve as illustrations.
The first case was not in the Prince's Trust abuse and loss study but,
unusually for the British press, was reported in some detail by one journalist at the
time of that study. A 14 year-old boy was charged with bayoneting another teenager
to death in a gang attack. This followed an alleged attack with a baseball bat on
another boy. The reporting psychiatrist informed the court that the young defendant
had witnessed his mother stab his father to death in their home when he was aged 6.
Thus he saw his father dead and his mother taken away to jail for manslaughter –
effectively a double bereavement. The boy reported persistent mental images and
nightmares about this event and had been deeply affected by the traumatic loss at a
very young age of both his parents. His response to emotional events generally was
one of numbness (a phenomenon we found ourselves as researchers often reading
about, as well as 'lost memory' or 'frozen emotion' in descriptions of our
respondents). The boy told the psychiatrist that while he was attacking the other
teenager, he had seen the image of his father dying, and the psychiatrist reported the
murder of the boy’s father by his mother as ‘clearly the most traumatic incident in
his life’. Yet the prosecution refused to accept the boy’s plea of guilty to
manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility. Clearly those concerned
were not persuaded of any link between the two events, despite the considerable
body of research available at the time on the effects of this particuar form of trauma
– i.e. the witnessing of parental violence and murder. (See Black, Kaplan & Harris-
Hendriks, 1993; Black, 1998; Black, Harris-Hendriks & Kaplan, 2000).
The second case in the abuse and loss study had not been included in the
figure of 72% experiencing abuse because there had been no professional
corroboration of it. However, the research team suspected it, based on a range of
disjointed records, as highlighted in the following recorded account (Boswell,
1996).
A young woman of 15, who we’ll call Jennifer, was convicted of the
murder of an elderly woman in her locality. She had exhibited ‘disturbed behaviour
from an early age’ and was described by her GP as ‘a very distressed child needing
 Pakistan Journal of Criminology
20
an urgent child psychiatry referral’ following a urinary tract infection and an
inability to use her right leg. She became unable to walk for 11 weeks, but a later
report described the condition as ‘a functional paralysis for which no cause could
be found’. Surrounding this situation was domestic violence and dsiruption at
home. The existence of this combination of factors would have raised the antennae
of many of those accustomed to working with abused children, but the records
contained no evidence of any formal abuse investigation or even of any probing
questionning.
Eight years after this account was published, the author attended a seminar
about violent young offenders at which a respected psychotherapist from the
Bowlby Centre was presenting a case study. After listening for some minutes, it
became clear to the author that the case the psychotherapist was talking about was
that of this very same young woman, Jennifer, with whom she had been working for
a number of years. She recounted a history of sustained and systematic abuse in the
life of this young woman which made it only too clear how traumatised she was
when she had committed her own crime. The psychotherapy had worked very well
in helping her to understand why she had done what she had done, to come to terms
with it, and the steps she would need to take to avoid such violence in the future.
She was now released and doing extremely well.
The crucial lesson from both the cases described above is that if their
childhood trauma had been recognised and worked with, two other human beings
would still be alive and these two young people themselves would have been most
unlikely to have ended up incarcerated at the heavy end of the criminal justice
system. Such evidence as is available about protective or resilience factors, for
example that of Lösel and Bender (2006) suggests that the two main factors that aid
recovery from trauma are (a) access to and ability to benefit from sympathetic
schooling and (b) to be able to share the story of the traumatic experience with at
least one responsible adult who will listen, believe, help the young person to
understand and to move on from that experience. As trauma expert Judith Herman
has noted, telling their story is a key step in recovery from trauma, enabling a new
sense of self and a new life narrative to develop (Herman, 2001).
Creating the space and opportunity for children to talk in this way is of the
essence, and yet it rarely seems to happen in the case of these young people. As
Yule, in a critique of issues and findings relating to childhood trauma observed:
‘One reason why professionals did not believe that children were subject to
physical or sexual abuse, or suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder was simply
- that they never asked them!’ (Yule, 1993: 165). However, the action that needs to
be taken is not only by child care and criminal justice professionals; it also requires
public and political will and understanding.
21 Professor Gwyneth Boswell

Conclusion:
This article has reflected upon findings from the author's and others'
research on the presence of trauma in the backgrounds of violent young offenders,
in order to focus attention on the ways forward for working effectively with these
undoubtedly challenging, frequently disturbed and sometimes continuingly
dangerous young people. The following five points offer suggestions to this end.
First, the age of criminal responsibility should be universally raised to at
least that of 14 years so that it becomes commensurate with that currently existing
in countries where such youngsters are channelled through the child care system,
rather than through a punitive and often re-abusive criminal justice system.
Second, there should be universal recognition of the United Nations Riyadh
Guidelines of 1990 which state:
Deprivation of the liberty of a juvenile should be a disposition of last
resort and for the minimum necessary period, and should be limited to
exceptional cases. (UN, Fundamental Perspective 2, 1990)

Third, professionals such as police, social workers, probation and prison

officers, need to be equipped with a firm knowledge base about the significance of
childhood trauma which will help them recognise the signs of phenomena such as
PTSD; they need also to be provided with the training and resources which will
enable them to intervene appropriately before high-risk behaviour becomes
entrenched within young adulthood. As a welcome start, two downloadable
practitioner guides on these matters have recently been published by the 'Beyond
Youth Custody' partnership (Wright & Liddle, 2014a, 2014b).
Fourth, as observed in an earlier issue of this Journal (Boswell, 2009),
young people who have been abused and otherwise traumatised need to be
supported by their communities, and their experiences believed and validated, so
that they can feel free to speak about them without shame being attached to this
process. Support for their parents and families are also needed. Police
professionals in particular have a key role to play here, in linking with their local
communities and communicating with them about the importance for community
safety of reaching an understanding of young violent offenders, and negotiating
with them the action that each sector can appropriately take to minimise the risks of
this happening in their communities.
Finally, research needs to be made central to the process of policy
formulation and effective application in the justice system for young people. In
other words, politicians, policy-makers and sentences need to listen to and act on
research findings. This, too, is an arena in which professionals can play a major
role, by becoming research-minded, and also by helping to represent not only their
 Pakistan Journal of Criminology
22
own views, but those of the public, victims and their families, and the youthful
perpetrators themselves, moving society towards a greater sense of collective
responsibility in the process.
In the ways outlined above, society's responses to young, violent offenders
can, become much more proactive, confident and accurate in the very complex
arena which spans child welfare and youth justice, and which frequently finds the
victim and the offender located in one single damaged young person.

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 Pakistan Journal of Criminology
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About the author:

Gwyneth Boswell is Director of Boswell Research Fellows and visiting professor at
the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. She has researched and published
widely on the subject of violent young offenders, both in the UK and South Africa.
She is also author of Violent Victims (Prince's Trust 1995); Violent Children and
Adolescents: Asking the Question Why (Whurr 2000); and, with Peter Wedge, of
Imprisoned Fathers and their Children (Jessica Kingsley 2002).