The Anatomy of Violence Read Online Free PDF Page A

what likely resulted in a very significant closed-head injury. Due to lack of close parental supervision, he was also knocked unconscious by a swing, and when six months old he fell out of the top of a bunk bed. So before he was even two years old he had a substantial history of head injury—and very likely brainimpairment.
    When Donta was three he was moved into one of the worst neighborhoodsin Washington, D.C. His defense attorney reported that as he walked in the area whereDonta grew up, he could see that every fourth or fifth house was burned or abandoned. During this time Donta was bounced around from hismother to his great-aunt and back again, experiencing sustained instability in bonding and a normal family life. Frequently he was left at home alone to fend for himself for the whole day. Things were so bad with his abusive mother that by the time he was ten, Donta often preferred to sleep in an abandoned building rather than face the abuse at home.
    Given how Donta’s mother had herself been raised, it was not surprising that she physically abused him. His grandmother testified that as an infant he was vigorouslyshaken on repeated occasions for crying. At the age of three, he was punched in the head by his mother so hard that it caused him headaches. At six he was being beaten with an electrical cord that caused bleeding. He was beaten for wetting himself. He was beaten for getting bad grades. He was beaten for any minor misbehavior. When his teacher told his mother that she suspected Donta hadADHD, his mother went home to beat him because he had achildhood disorder. It was documented that by age ten he was being hit by his mother with a closed fist. Donta was also burned with cigarettes, leaving him with dark black spots on his arm that remain in adulthood—alongside scars on his thighs, back, flanks, arm, and chest that bear testimony to the bombardment of abuse.
    That abuse was dealt out not just by his mother but also by neighboring predators. When he was ten he was violently raped by a next-door neighbor. Back in the local emergency room, it was documented that he had rectal bleeding. It was further suspected that he was also bleeding internally. Despite all the physical evidence of rape, the hospital never referred the matter to child protection agencies. Donta was sent back to live in the same house, across the way from the same rapist, likely to be raped again. He was given neither counseling nor one ounce of understanding. Neither the family nor the hospital cared about the safety of a small, unsupervised boy from predatoryneighborhood rapists.
    The abuse escalated. By age thirteen, he was yet again back in the ER because his mother had hit him very hard on the side of his head with an iron. The attending physician documented welts on his arm where his mother had struck him with an electrical cord and the swelling to his temple where he had been hit with the iron. This was cleardocumentation of child abuse, 5 but no action was taken, and Donta was ultimately returned back home to his mother.
    As one might have predicted, Donta was committing property crimes by the age of sixteen and was duly sent to a juvenile detention center. When he was later on trial as an adult for homicide, his attorney carefully pointed out that by the age of eighteen, Donta had been referred by teachers and probation officers for psychological treatment an amazing nineteen times. Astonishingly, he never received even one treatment session. Eight of these attempted referrals were before he had committed a single criminal act.
    Given the complete absence of any form of intervention, it is unsurprising that Donta quickly fell into a criminal lifestyle, committing robberies andburglaries that when he was eighteen resulted in a sentence of twenty years in prison and ten suspended sentences. He’d only served four years, however, before being let out on parole and sent to a halfway house on Stout Street inDenver, Colorado, in October