Free The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog by Bruce Perry

soothing and calm as possible.
    â€œI really like red. This should be a red car,” I said, pointing at a picture in my coloring book.
    Sandy studied my face, my hands, and my slow movements. She was only partly attentive to my words. This little girl was justifiably suspicious. For a long time I colored alone, chattering about my choices of colors, being as casual and friendly as possible without being overly “bright” as Stan had been when he tried to mask his anxiety. Eventually, Sandy broke the rhythm by moving a bit closer toward me and silently directing me to use a specific color. I complied. Once she came over to me, I stopped talking. For many minutes more we colored together in silence.
    I had yet to ask her about what had happened, but I could sense that she knew that was why I was there—and that she knew that I knew she knew. All of the adults in her “new” life had sooner or later, in some way, returned her to that night.
    â€œWhat happened to your neck?” I asked, pointing to her two scars. She acted as if she did not hear me. She did not change her expression. She did not change the pace of her coloring.
    I repeated the question. Now, she froze. Coloring stopped. Her eyes stared off into space, unblinking. I asked again. She took her crayon and scribbled over her well-formed, disciplined picture but gave no response.

    Again, I asked. I hated this. I knew I was pushing her toward her painful memories.
    Sandy stood up, grabbed a stuffed rabbit, held it by the ears and slashed at the neck of the animal with the crayon. As she slashed, she repeated, “It’s for your own good, dude.” Over and over—a stuck recording.
    She threw the animal to the floor, ran to the radiator, and climbed up and jumped off again and again. She did not respond to my warnings to be careful. Worried that she would hurt herself, I rose and caught her on one of her jumps. She melted into my arms. We sat together for a few more minutes. Her frenzied breathing slowed and then almost stopped. And then, in a slow, robotic monotone she told me about that night.
    An acquaintance of her mother had come to their apartment. He had rung the doorbell and her mother had let him in. “Mama was yelling, the bad guy was hurting her,” she said. “I should have killed him.”
    â€œWhen I came out of my room and mama was asleep, then he cut me,” she continued, “He said, ‘It’s for your own good, dude.’”
    The assailant had cut her throat—twice. Sandy immediately collapsed. Later, she regained consciousness and attempted to “wake up” her mother. She took milk from the refrigerator and gagged when she tried to drink some. It oozed through the slit in her throat. She tried to give some to her mother, but “she was not thirsty,” Sandy told me. Sandy wandered that apartment for eleven hours before anyone came. A relative, worried that Sandy’s mother had not answered the phone, had dropped by and discovered the horrifying crime scene.
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    BY THE END of that interview I was certain that testifying would be devastating for Sandy. She needed help and, if she did have to testify, more time to prepare. Stan would work successfully, as it turned out, to postpone the trial. “Could you do the therapy?” he asked me. Of course. I couldn’t say no.
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    THE I MAGES OF SANDY burned into my mind during that interview were staggering: a three-year-old child, her throat cut, weeping, trying to
comfort and also seeking comfort from her naked mother’s hog-tied, bloody, and ultimately cold body. How helpless, confused and terrified she must have felt! Her symptoms—her “absences,” her avoidant responses to my questions, her hiding, her specific fears—were defenses constructed by her brain to keep the trauma at bay. Understanding those defenses would be critical to helping her and other children like her.
    Even in