Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/post-traumatic-stress-disorder/)
Flinching as a gunshot whizzes past your window. Covering your ears when a police car races down your street, sirens blaring. Walking past a drug deal on your block or a beating at your school.
I’m writing this for the benefit of families who may have a family member trapped in a foreign prison, for other advocates and for my own closure. What I have learned could fill volumes.
Back in the fall of 2011, kids bullied Alycin Mabry so severely that her mom decided to home school the Atlanta 14-year-old. At the time, her mom Annise Mabry saw homeschooling as the shining answer the family needed. But today, Mabry says, it’s clear that their struggle was far from over. “Maybe two or three months into the online school, Ali started to become more and more isolated,” Mabry said. “I just couldn’t get her out of the room.
The girl is maybe 15 years old? She is standing in the back of a building, or maybe it’s an alley way. She has her arms wrapped around her body and her teeth are chattering. When the officer approaches and tells her to leave the alley way she shakes her head and refuses. The officer moves in closer and reiterates his order to leave. Suddenly the girl is lunging at him, screaming, “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me! Get away from me!” She is pushing her hands out at him, then pointing her finger at the officer, ordering him to keep his distance.