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Authors: Laura Tillman
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on drugs herself. Rather than having the children forcibly removed, Angela decided to bring them to Los Fresnos to live with her mother. Since John was not the biological father of Julissa or John Stephan, the decision was hers to make. John was arrested for possession of marijuana close to that time, but his sentence was suspended and he was put on probation.
The family usually ate their meals at the Good Neighbor Settlement House, a soup kitchen in Barrio Buena Vida that supplies three meals a day, clothes, and showers to the needy. The spare, cinder-block cafeteria is full most every day. During the week, when the older kids are at school, adults dominate the room. Theyâre a mixture of homeless and low-income people trying to supplement food stamps. John and Angelaâs children never made it to school; they were too young. The family was a fixture at Good Neighbor, located conveniently a few blocks away. Along with the Boys and Girls Club, it was the childrenâs main point of contact with the rest of the city.
In May of 2003, just two months after the crimes occurred, the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College published a report about Barrio Buena Vida. Though the researchers tried to highlight the areaâs assets, like its central location and walkability, they also included some disturbing data about violent crime from the previous few years. In 2002, 91 percent of all reported rapes in the city happened in this neighborhood, a small section of the city that was home to just 2.1 percent of its population. Nine percent of aggravated assaults and 7 percent of robberies occurred there as well.
The Brownsville Herald is located here, as well, and Iâd often pass Good Neighbor on my way to work. The friendly-looking center had a cubist mural with two womenâs faces painted on the far wall. The whole complex was surrounded by a high chain-link fence.
It was the children who led me back to Good Neighbor. They were the victims at the center of the crime, but I knew just a few scattered details about each of them. I struggled to glimpse a fragment of their identities. I wondered what made them laugh, if they were friendly to other children, what games they played with each other, what their voices sounded like. I wondered how the precariousness of their living situation affected them. In a way I was searching for the DNA of whom they would have become. A colleague I told about the story remarked that children can weather tough situations, playing with whateverâs available.I wanted to believe that. Johnâs assessment that the family was âhappy just to be together and content with the little we hadâ was also a comforting fantasy. But Iâd studied the catastrophic ways childhood trauma can impact people for life. In the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, Dr. Robert Anda from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Dr. Vincent Felitti from Kaiser Permanente tracked a group of more than seventeen thousand adults, mostly middle- and upper-class white San Diegans, and found that adverse experiences during their early years had a major impact on their physical and mental health later in life. There was a direct correlation between the number of ACEs theyâd had and their likelihood to suffer from depression, addictive behaviors, heart disease, cancer, and early death. In his book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character , journalist Paul Tough writes about the resilience it takes for children to overcome this early adversity, observing that it is just one in a set of noncognitive skills needed to achieve success. Though many children face the same obstacles, some are able to rise above while others are not. Their relationship with their parents is an especially important predictor of which group they will fall into. Is there a sense of empathic understanding or indifference? Is there safety, or the stress that
The family usually ate their meals at the Good Neighbor Settlement House, a soup kitchen in Barrio Buena Vida that supplies three meals a day, clothes, and showers to the needy. The spare, cinder-block cafeteria is full most every day. During the week, when the older kids are at school, adults dominate the room. Theyâre a mixture of homeless and low-income people trying to supplement food stamps. John and Angelaâs children never made it to school; they were too young. The family was a fixture at Good Neighbor, located conveniently a few blocks away. Along with the Boys and Girls Club, it was the childrenâs main point of contact with the rest of the city.
In May of 2003, just two months after the crimes occurred, the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College published a report about Barrio Buena Vida. Though the researchers tried to highlight the areaâs assets, like its central location and walkability, they also included some disturbing data about violent crime from the previous few years. In 2002, 91 percent of all reported rapes in the city happened in this neighborhood, a small section of the city that was home to just 2.1 percent of its population. Nine percent of aggravated assaults and 7 percent of robberies occurred there as well.
The Brownsville Herald is located here, as well, and Iâd often pass Good Neighbor on my way to work. The friendly-looking center had a cubist mural with two womenâs faces painted on the far wall. The whole complex was surrounded by a high chain-link fence.
It was the children who led me back to Good Neighbor. They were the victims at the center of the crime, but I knew just a few scattered details about each of them. I struggled to glimpse a fragment of their identities. I wondered what made them laugh, if they were friendly to other children, what games they played with each other, what their voices sounded like. I wondered how the precariousness of their living situation affected them. In a way I was searching for the DNA of whom they would have become. A colleague I told about the story remarked that children can weather tough situations, playing with whateverâs available.I wanted to believe that. Johnâs assessment that the family was âhappy just to be together and content with the little we hadâ was also a comforting fantasy. But Iâd studied the catastrophic ways childhood trauma can impact people for life. In the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, Dr. Robert Anda from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Dr. Vincent Felitti from Kaiser Permanente tracked a group of more than seventeen thousand adults, mostly middle- and upper-class white San Diegans, and found that adverse experiences during their early years had a major impact on their physical and mental health later in life. There was a direct correlation between the number of ACEs theyâd had and their likelihood to suffer from depression, addictive behaviors, heart disease, cancer, and early death. In his book How Children Succeed: Grit, Curiosity, and the Hidden Power of Character , journalist Paul Tough writes about the resilience it takes for children to overcome this early adversity, observing that it is just one in a set of noncognitive skills needed to achieve success. Though many children face the same obstacles, some are able to rise above while others are not. Their relationship with their parents is an especially important predictor of which group they will fall into. Is there a sense of empathic understanding or indifference? Is there safety, or the stress that
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