Tom was eleven years old, as our Reporter he first met. He met a deeply traumatized young between suspicion and blind trust towards Strangers. This is twelve years ago. Now we have the now 23-Year-old visited again. How is Tom today, read in the new star (book 04/2019), available from this Thursday. Click here to read the report, which appeared in the star 9/2008.
How slowly the Boy polished the hood. Slowly, he lets his Hand over the red metal circles. Slightly bent and with gentle pressure the way to wash a car. Only the stone in the child’s hand irritated. The flat pebble scratching an Ellipse in the cooler.
A satellite on the orbit, the suddenly a large Hand wraps and upward rips. “Why are you doing that?” Dirk Müller* asks out of breath. He ran to the VW Golf in the driveway and holds the boy’s hand. “I play wash the car,” says Tom*.
Tom, 11, do not know how a child plays. He’s been studying it for almost eight years. Three and a half, he was saying, as him, the youth welfare office from his “family of origin”, as the authorities pulled out and in the care of a “foster family”. It was the Chance at a second life. The first one was almost forfeited.
A row house, in a bright dining room, pine furniture on the floorboards. Photos with ships on the walls and a miniature lighthouse on the window sill; maritim it looks here, in the middle of a suburb, in the Sauerland region. “I used to be a sailor,” said Dirk Müller. It sounds like it was a long time ago. Now, says the foster-father, give it to him Tom. Because this is a “box”. This is a word he often says. In the head of the diploma in nautical stacking is still the Container of a ship.
A sharp cry, panic at the dining table. “Stop!” Tom calls. It is 13 o’clock. Just Dirk Müller grabbed the trowel and began to scrape the last remnants of pumpkin soup from the bowl.
“Do you want to?” he asks Tom. No, since the minutes of Tom’s spoon pulls listless small channels in the Yellow in your own soup plate.
But the bowl, the empty no one in front of his eyes.
It could be the last.
The nervous system is switched to emergency mode
Before the police freed him at the time, Tom ate Hunger the Wallpaper from the wall. His left ear was deaf and injured from the blows to his abdomen from sexual abuse. He could go three steps, knew no thirty words, and felt no more pain. The nervous system had switched over to emergency operation. “In the acts of the Jugendamt, only that he had been neglected,” recalls Anke Müller*, Tom’s foster-mother.
And that the three and a half year old physically, was emotionally and mentally not on the age-appropriate state – of the actual damages anticipated at the time, still nothing.
The story of Tom’s origin is similar to many other stories in Germany. His mother, a woman who knew never a real home. The potion and her mother also drank. Father Tom had not. Of the numerous lovers of the mother, you do not know, who to him blundered – it was only years later, the sexual abuse was proved to Tom.
Of course, he had been after the withdrawal studied, but superficial. The deafness was not discovered, and it was only when the Small after a few months, said: “there is Nothing in the Po stuck”, grew the terrible suspicion. Finally, the abuse was detected, but the tracks have long since been blurred, and the mother lives far away from Tom in state care and therapy.
The couple Müller could not have children.
And they wanted to help. The youth welfare office gave them, quick and unbureaucratically Tom. “He had such a warm, open face,” to tell the foster parents. Both did not know that Tom’s Smile of a survival strategy. “He made every one,” says Dirk Müller. “He didn’t know what was coming. If it were something to eat, or shock, or anything. He took what he could get.” The Boy was in danger, away smile.
Tom received the Miller a new family. Soon they realized that something was wrong. Constantly chair leaked out of his Butt, up to 15 diapers, you had to kill him on the day.
His only sentence was: “After the Dortmund food to go.” Later, they learned that it had formerly taken an aunt and siblings to McDonald’s. And they got further indications of abuse, as Tom painted the Wallpaper of his room with genitalia. The leaks of stool: a protection of the Pos before worse.
As they carried the nearly four-year-olds, fed, stroked and kissed him, and he got to run and talk.
With a Smile, and Tom adores Stranger
What exactly is in his first family, the white Tom didn’t happened. But it is there. He now sits in the middle of the Asphalt, Frost occupied the serpentine road, a white snake, the cold draws in Tom’s clothes. “You stand up, please?” Dirk Müller asks quietly, almost casually. “No,” answered Tom, aloud. Tom is angry, no one is allowed to touch him, because he was not permitted just to touch the man. Those passers-by who had asked five minutes ago on the way to a paddock that looked so nice, and the Tom zustürmte and he tried to hug – before he was ripped back from Dirk Müller. “Let me go, no, no!” Tom says now. The Passer-by, a little disturbed, is long gone.
It happens again and again: with A Smile, and Tom adores Strangers, wants to follow them unconditionally, on the search for orientation and security. Each and every day, Tom is caught in a thicket of zweifelndem suspicion and blind trust to those out there. Bonds are scary. He always is on the hat and would still like to hug in the next Moment, the whole world. Failing that, the world for him, then he washes a car with stones, then his head like a single hole in which everything disappears.
Also the Knowledge of how a child plays. Then he sits on the Asphalt and don’t want to go.
Dirk Müller freezes. The long pants he would have to put on this bird-chirping warm winter morning, the falls now, hours later, in a dark afternoon cold. Dirk Müller sits down next to Tom on the street. “We want to eat an ice cream?” “No.” – “But I’ve got you doll lovers.” – “I want chocolate.” The love needs to be proven Tom every day. Every day he asks if the foster parents are Bad to – that’s why he provoked, a dog he cries and. And calms down in the arms of Dirk Müller, whose face is scarred by abandonment. “For seven years, Tom is in spite of the phase,” he says and narrows his eyes like an owl, his Hand on the manicured three-day beard. Despite his eleven years of Tom’s social old-age amounts to about three years. So often, he would say no. His Job as a Maritime teacher has abandoned Müller, after he had realized what the “box” with Tom when you moved in.
The money earned now wife Anke as an administrative officer, 900 euros you can get from social services, it is enough to use. Dirk müller’s new job description is to establish: peace and quiet.
Because Tom’s body is insane. His brain is coupled through the trauma of miscarriage, it is a stress hormone releases every day, the nerves attacking and Tom, Hyper-active, a wriggling prisoner of his self.
Brain researchers discovered this malfunction in humans, only about ten years ago. It arises when life-duration threatening attracts stress over several months. “Chronic Hyper-cortisol ISM,” call the medics, this disease. Dirk Müller says simply: “crash kids”. A drug, however, it will probably never be. Still, the researchers know too little about the brain. But you know that Tom is not an isolated case. In Germany, around 20,000 children who have experienced severe trauma in life.
In almost every one of them Doctors the stress hormone.
The consequences: Often, these children can’t catch the right idea, he slips right out from under you. And then you wriggle.
Tom goes to the school
Only rest helps. And A Sense Of Security. “Like a stroke”, explains Dirk Müller. “As life remains, the Routine falls away, and a long-term therapy begins.” The reality is for Tom to be different. For example, there is the play therapy, the paid the youth welfare office and the leak was because it saw no progress. Since the school is for example. Tom goes to the 4. Class a school for the physically disabled, where they treated him like a heart attack patient is sent instead to rehabilitation back to the Job.
Tom’s trauma is not recognized by the school in a report. Because of the additional missing devices, his hearing aid in many Places of the school building, the language support is not provided. Also, its strictly prescribed diet keeps the school never really; his gut, however, is the abuse of broken and can only tolerate bland diet – no milk, sugar, onions and garlic. Otherwise “lubricates” the chair, says Dirk Müller, and Tom does not feel it does not flow, because the nerves to work there.
Dirk Müller demanded that the Boy should participate only a few hours a day at school. The teacher insisted on all-day schooling. If Tom comes late in the afternoon to go home, he is excited and tense. “The teachers are often good,” says Dirk Müller, “but you have no experience with severely traumatized children. You predict the Psyche of sure linked children.” Recently, Tom attended a different school, for mentally disabled persons. “Tom is a quiet, the school is working me,” says Dirk Müller. A conversation with the star about the allegations, rejects Tom’s old school. “We have very good memories of him and wish him all the best,” it says. “I had the feeling that teachers shy away from Tom’s past,” says Anke Müller.
Rather you would do so, as the Boy would be a zappel Philipp, a holding, in which the grows.
Crash kids without friends
To talk, to tell, how it goes with your foster child really needs to Anke Müller entered this evening an unadorned Brick low-rise building. A long office table, two neon tubes, the bleaching light is able to feel every facial wrinkle.
But here, no one wants to hide something. At the monthly Meeting of the “Association for the care and adoptive parents,” they often talk in haste and confusion, as time is not rich. Today there are eleven. All of them have a severely traumatised child at home. “It is lonely,” says a forty-something. First of all, the friends no longer came to visit, then they would invite you. The crash kids scare you. “We have designed the encounters remain,” says his wife. The Association of parents with each other and their children, in the Zoo or in Parks. “All of our children are so, because you have to explain anything.” A friend not one of your crash kids.
There are the house wife and a civil engineer from the neighboring city. Because their daughter had survived a severe heart disease, fulfilled a vow, and took a Crashkid. The most serious disabilities had been found, a skull – brain Trauma due to shaking and other abuse.
No therapy is possible, a care case in the permanent bed, the Doctors said. Because the new parents went to Belgium, and put your savings in a therapy Swimming with dolphins – and now Thomas* runs and goes to school.
The cash paid for nothing. The stress hormone, which remained the body by shakes is. “A normal child we will resume again at any time, a disabled and traumatised.”
Because of the building construction employees and the nurse. An emergency, a dying infant in addition to the depressive mother, took her and their three children. With the youth welfare office, they were six years in litigation.
The authority wanted to see the little Luke* back in the “family of origin”. “Parental right,” said the chief officer, although Luke screamed and hit his head bloody, as soon as he saw the mother. The court postponed a decision until the rich moved to the judiciary. The new law, a true attested to the child welfare law of diffraction, and Luke spoke to the foster parents. “What is it that makes your cramps in Scream?”, ask in the round.
In this barren community room it’s like an exclusive club. The price is high. Only none of the members wanted the definition. From the Church tower opposite it strikes ten, Dirk Müller adopted. He still had to go Jogging once.
Everything here is child
“At the bottom of the body runs, and the top of the head rotates. So it gets you out of depressive phases.” Five of ten friends sitting around Tom. In exact Position, like every Morning, look at the dog and the cat, the bear and the dragon plush Tom in his room, during the fiddles on the switch of the hearing aid. It’s Saturday, nine in the Morning. In an hour of therapy, in the neighboring city riding, then dyslexia exercises and, later, the Union of teaching Come into the Church, and costs nothing, at least of the.
For the therapy and the Exercises müller’s figures. As the switch snaps into place on the ear, and the vibrations of the room, amplified by the ear canal lawn, twitching Tom’s eyes for a minute. Silent against the plush animals, and the six posters of baby animals on the wall. Everything here is child. In addition to the night table and an empty feeding bottle is that it requires every night.
“Are you coming?”, asks Tom. “Our car is very strong.” Purring of the Golf slides, a Serpentine up into the mountains, the snow flakes dance in the winter air. The car turns into an unpaved side path, in second gear, it goes along a dense tree work, then a wide open clearing.
The Horse Paddock. Tom jumps first out of the car, runs to the barn. Five Teenagers are already waiting for him, the teacher helps him on a brown gelding. “Come on, let’s go,” urges Tom.
None of the peers here knows his past. Here, he is not a Crashkid, here he is a Cowboy. He leads the group. Seven horses up trotting the Meadow, along with countless uprooted trees, the hurricane “Kyrill” had ripped a year ago, out of the ground. “Hüüah!”, Tom calls. The gelding gallops.
“Wait,” calls the teacher, “so fast!” However, Tom leaves the others behind, his body lays on the gelding, and is soon only a distant point. No people more. Only a fine, untouched snow.
* All names have been changed
Read in the new star, as Tom, 23, today.
