An event this Saturday is exploring the impact of childhood trauma and how acquired childhood experiences, or ACEs, can affect people later in life.
Taking place at The Table on West Capitol Drive, the Milwaukee's youth: What we can learn about trauma from Marlin Dixon event is, in part, centered on the conviction of Marlin Dixon, who at 14 years old was sentenced to 18 years in prison. In 2002, Dixon with a group of young people beat a man to death.
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reporter James Causey is one of the organizers of the event and reported on Dixon's story. Causey, along with photojournalist Angela Peterson, talk about what we can learn from Dixon’s life.
"[Childhood trauma was] not an issue we talked about back in 2002. We were under the impression that kids who did this [were] just bad and they needed to be locked up. So, we only started talking about childhood trauma around 2005, 2006, where it really started to pick up steam," Causey explains.
He adds, "We always knew that soldiers and people participated in combat had experienced bouts of trauma. But we never were able to associate it to our youth growing up in violent neighborhoods and being exposed to violence at a young age."
The event on Saturday will include a panel discussion, small breakout sessions and help for teenagers and families as well as for people who are returning home from prison.
"[We will] have people take ACE tests to understand [trauma] more and come up with solutions and some ideas that we could present to our political powers that be on how to better incarcerate our youth, and really take in ACE and things like that and trauma into consideration if our youth get in trouble," Causey says.
