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PRELIMINARY STATEMENT
CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS ON WACO
Bruce Duncan Perry, M.D., Ph.D.
CIVITAS Child Trauma Programs
A Partnership of:
CIVITAS Initiative,
Baylor College of Medicine
and Texas Children's Hospital
ABUSIVE CHILDREARING PRACTICES AT RANCH APOCALYPSE
Destructive characteristics of this setting included undermining traditional
parent-child relationships by David Koresh Attachments to parent figures
were continually undermined and replaced with inappropriate dependence upon a
central figure, David Koresh. Continuous undermining of other relationships,
including sibling relationships, husband and wife relationships, and
friendships was pervasive. Any attachment judged to be more important to an
individual than the attachment to God or David was undermined. By 1992, these
children were taught to view David Koresh as their father, and later, these
children were taught to consider David as God (see slides). In the context of
this evolving theology, Koresh's views became increasingly restrictive,
unpredictable and harsh for the children living at Ranch Apocalypse (see
Attachment 7).
These children had a set of inappropriate and age-inappropriate behaviors and
significant gaps in general understanding, reflecting the idiosyncratic
teaching practices present in the compound. For example, very young children,
including a six year old girl, knew an incredible amount about weapons, while
they knew almost nothing about other common age-appropriate concepts. In one
example, we had a room with a variety of toys, including a small bolt action
toy rifle. Invariably, in the first visit to the room, each child first went
over and picked up the rifle. In one interview, a young girl went over,
picked up the rifle, pulled the bolt back, looked down the barrel and said
with disgust, "This isn't a real gun."
It is clear that these children were significantly traumatized by previous
harsh and inappropriate disciplinary techniques including severe corporal
punishment, extended isolation (overnight), severe food restrictions and
separation from primary caretakers. These children were continually exposed
to harsh, capricious, and humiliating disciplinary techniques. Children
expected to be beaten for events such as spilling milk. Infants were severely
spanked for 'misbehaving'. In addition, these children were threatened with
death if they revealed aspects of life inside the compound to the
'non-believers'. As is typical when an abusive adult threatens a child, they
were told that 'they will not understand our special ways'. These children
were convinced that David Koresh would return from the grave and punish them
if they betrayed the Davidians by interacting with, or disclosing to, the
'bad guys' (law enforcement, non-believers, 'Babylonians').
Koresh was exploitive and manipulative of these children and exposing them to
a variety of inappropriate sexual content -- such as graphically describing
intercourse and sexual 'technique' in his hours-long sermons where children
were present. Furthermore, the girls were socialized to believe that sex with
Koresh, by age 12 (and earlier), was normative, appropriate, and, indeed,
desirable -- being part of God's plan as revealed to David. All of the young
girls were being prepared to be David's wives and that was a healthy and
desired position to be in. One of the older girls expressed distress, now
that she had been released from the compound, that she would not be able to
be picked by David as one of his brides. Clear and compelling disclosure of
sexual abuse of a 10 year old child by David Koresh was obtained during this
time. This child had left the compound in the year prior to assault. The
nature of the disclosure, the content and detail of the abuse all were very
consistent with the content of sexual beliefs which were shared with our team
by many of the 21 released children.
These children were significantly exploited, manipulated and exposed to a
variety of inappropriate experiences and deprived of other normative
experiences. These children were very rarely given the opportunity to be
independent and when they did make any independent decisions about any aspect
of their lives, including things as small as choosing what they would eat,
who they would sit next to at dinner or choosing what clothes they would
wear, David Koresh would periodically challenge, provoke and demand that they
change what they were doing -- for example, he would demand that someone eat
only potatoes for the next three days. Because of the lack of opportunity to
make independent decisions about even minor aspects of their lives, these
children experienced significant abnormalities in areas of functioning which
are globally called ego function. This includes things such as sense of self,
self-esteem, dependence/independence and abstract thinking. This was
illustrated by a poignant series of drawings by one child (see slides).
SUMMARY
In summary, our work demonstrated 1) an abusive and
psychologically-destructive living situation for children at Ranch
Apocalypse, 2) a pervasive belief by the Davidians that this was the final
battle long predicted by Koresh, 3) a belief system capable of an 'abstract'
suicide and 4) a 'negotiation' process which resulted in Koresh and the
Davidians feeling increasingly under threat -- under siege, thereby making
rational decision-making on the part of Koresh or the Davidians increasingly
difficult.
All of these opinions were shared with the FBI in either written form or face
to face meetings with members of the FBI Hostage Negotiation team. While I am
unsure of how this information was used (or misused), the complexity of this
event and the tragic loss of human life require that we do more than the
usual political posturing when we examine all of our actions at Waco.
In this regard, let me emphasize that, despite what religious and social
apologists say, any adult who grooms children to be his sex objects is
sexually abusing those children. Sex between an adult and a child is abusive.
Sex between an adult and an 11 or 12 year old child can not be consensual.
The fact that the name of God and religion were used to obscure this
exploitive and abusive practice make these activities even more heinous and
destructive to the long term development of these children. The fact that
responsible adults, either parents or 'academics', would minimize these
activities is shameful. David Koresh systematically exploited the members of
the Branch Davidian community, slowly but surely coercing that community to
play out the tragic and destructive visions of his disturbed inner world.
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