They remember if it is tramatic. My 22 month old grandson related an incident after 2 years had passed and no one was aware he knew what happened yet he all of a sudden he started to talk about it. They are little sponges and if they can get it out before they are much older the better they will be for it. Let's hope counseling will help. jmo
I'm very leery of counselors talking to children ever since the McMartin School debacle.
I hope they record every second the therapist is with the kid. I hope that the kid tells them something they didn't know that breaks the case, but only somebody who was there could possibly know. It seems that it's very easy to implant memories in children. JMO
ETA: If Josh knows that one or more of the kids knows something and could spit it out now, I'd do anything I could to make sure they never had to take the stand. I'd come clean and avoid a trial altogether.
Traditional therapy - talk or play therapy - can be very, very detrimental to children who have experienced trauma, based on what I have researched. In fact, I would say that being compelled to discuss a traumatic experience
over and over again, in an effort to "get past it", which is what much traditional trauma therapy can consist of, is very bad for adults as well. One of my clients almost lost his mind recently doing a therapy in which he was supposed to relive past experiences and master his emotions in relation to those experiences.
I hear people talk about counseling all the time as a panacea to incidents of violence or trauma. When I hear that, I think of the traditional kind when the therapist asks about the incident(s) and asks the child to draw pictures about it, or asks them to talk about it or act it out with dolls, etc. My feeling is that reliving or discussing trauma in counseling is not a good way to overcome its effects. There are better ways for kids to learn to deal with it and that includes simply having very nurturing caregivers who allow them to be as babied as they want to be, to reestablish a feeling of security and trust, among other things.
Nevertheless, children who may have witnessed a crime or been a victim of a crime, obviously need to discuss what they experienced, with trained personnel. It is further trauma but there is clearly no way of getting around it. A agree, Steely, that it needs to be videotaped and done with utmost care by professionals.
That being said, I really don't think the kids witnessed the murder of their mother in a graphic manner. They may have seen her acting sick and possibly vomiting or holding her chest, but that's not the kind of trauma I'm talking about - not the same as seeing dad stab, shoot or strangle mom, or drag her dead body into a car.
I am shocked, but not shocked that Josh's mom wrote a letter in support of him to the court. She of all people knows how dangerous Steve is. She knows what kind of brain washing happens in that house. Has she visited the boys in WA? If so, when and for how long? On the other hand, she probably is just trying to keep a relationship with her son. How does she feel that he seems to be just as anti-mormon as his dad?
I would love to know what Josh said to his mom in that video where one of the boys is reaching out, and Josh glares at his mom and says something.
Can you link to the video you're talking about? I've never seen that.
I agree his mom is just trying to hold on to whatever relationship she can with josh and the boys. I did notice she was careful in what she said, making sure to state she hadn't seen them much.
And I believe josh probably did seem like a good dad. He probably did feed them got them into activities, was careful about their safety, hugged them etc..
But good dads don't allow their kids to be in a home with a voyeuristic pornographer, or try to undermine the relationship with their mother by telling them that she's bad for putting them to bed or taking them to church. Good dads also don't work hard to sever the relationship the kids had with their mom's loving parents and family, they don't take out baseless RO's against the grandparents in an effort to keep them from the boys, and they don't request that the children stay in foster care with strangers rather than with the grandparents who love them so much.
Finally, good dads don't kill mommy.
[his van may stall]
