{"id":69151,"date":"2025-08-25T17:15:21","date_gmt":"2025-08-25T17:15:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.survivorjusticecenter.org\/?p=69151"},"modified":"2025-08-25T17:15:21","modified_gmt":"2025-08-25T17:15:21","slug":"the-time-a-young-ptsd-wracked-veteran-walked-into-her-backyard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.survivorjusticecenter.org\/es\/the-time-a-young-ptsd-wracked-veteran-walked-into-her-backyard\/","title":{"rendered":"Aquella vez que un joven veterano afectado por el trastorno de estr\u00e9s postraum\u00e1tico entr\u00f3 en su patio trasero"},"content":{"rendered":"

Originally Published by Baptist News Global<\/em><\/p>\n

I was sitting on my back porch<\/b>, watching some early Fourth of July fireworks but not feeling at all patriotic as I pondered the current\u00a0ICE raids<\/a>.\u00a0Almost everyone\u00a0I know is\u00a0impacted, asking about their\u00a0loved one and\u00a0wondering what can we do if they are\u00a0detained<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Suddenly, a young man appeared in my backyard.<\/p>\n

All\u00a0my instincts were warning me of danger and to be careful. But I also listened when he told me he needed help and was abandoned. He told me he was at a party and repeated that he\u00a0was\u00a0abandoned. Then he told me he served in Afghanistan and has PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.<\/p>\n

My training for working at the\u00a0Survivor Justice Center,<\/a>\u00a0with a model of holistic services and an integrated trauma-informed model, taught me to de-escalate and to listen, while still being cautious.<\/p>\n

I got my visitor a chair and some water, and I saw that his hand was bleeding. He said he punched the back window of his car to open it. He said he couldn\u2019t find his phone. He couldn\u2019t find his keys. He went to a laundromat for help, and someone there told him they were going to call the police on him.<\/p>\n

He asked me to call his sister and his dad,\u00a0and it was his father who\u00a0immediately\u00a0said he would come pick him up. He was 30 minutes away.<\/p>\n

I knew I had 30 minutes to de-escalate<\/b>, 30 minutes to listen, 30 minutes to intervene, 30 minutes to be cautious but a human.<\/p>\n

Thirty minutes of my life was\u00a0impacted, but I learned this young man, at the age of 27, is\u00a0impacted\u00a0forever. I found out he has a child, so intergenerational trauma is likely to occur. I found out maybe he\u2019d\u00a0been incarcerated. He killed people for the U.S. Marines in Afghanistan.\u00a0He\u00a0spoke of women potentially having explosive devices hidden in their clothing.\u202fHe spoke about a fellow Marine getting killed and another one having his legs blown off.<\/p>\n

He\u00a0said nobody\u00a0cares\u00a0about what they did to him. Nobody cares about his trauma.\u00a0I\u2019m\u00a0listening, because in my work, what I think is: \u201cNobody cares about the victims.\u00a0Nobody cares about the innocent. Nobody cares about who is harmed by a system that seems to be about power and greed and money and war, this military-industrial complex.\u201d<\/p>\n

The recent\u00a0Big Beautiful Bill<\/a>\u00a0only further\u00a0demonstrates we\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0care about the\u00a0neediest, when\u00a0we are cutting lifesaving resources like Medicaid and resources for vets.<\/p>\n

This man is a\u00a0victim of a system. My clients also\u00a0are victims and survivors,\u00a0and they, too, feel they are not important or cared for.<\/p>\n

My\u00a0kids came outside, and I said: \u201cGo upstairs.<\/b> Go in your rooms. Close the door.\u201d I wanted to protect my kids, but I also thought about this young man. I would want someone to protect my child if they were in trouble, but this young man was bleeding and unstable.\u202fDid he hurt someone? What dangers did he cause? It\u2019s this horrible system, this intergenerational system of violence and creating victims.\u202fAnd this young man told me he had a child.\u00a0So now a system may get involved \u2014 the child abuse system.<\/p>\n

Thirty minutes later, his dad, sister and mother arrived. He threw himself on the floor and again declared that nobody cares, nobody\u2019s listening. But I said, \u201cYour family is here.\u201d<\/p>\n

They told me he served in Afghanistan. They thanked me.<\/p>\n

This family will spend years trying to support him, years trying to take care of him. I only had 30 minutes to give.\u202fAnd it cost nothing.<\/p>\n

The\u00a0harms trauma create\u00a0take\u00a0years to unravel \u2014 years of trauma to the families, to the victims, to their children, to the community.<\/p>\n

If this young man\u00a0hadn\u2019t\u00a0shown up in my backyard, he could have been arrested and thrown in jail. His car would have been impounded. But would he have gotten any help? I hope those 30 minutes helped him.<\/p>\n

Every\u00a0immigration attorney<\/a> I know right now is working double- or triple-time trying to answer all the questions of all the people who need help. Many of them give a 30-minute consult for free to anyone who needs it, just to share information as quickly as they can. The laws are changing daily, hourly, weekly and monthly. It\u2019s unsustainable, and something must give.<\/p>\n

We must care for all victims and not create new victims.\u00a0Today, these past three weeks, past six months, have created harms that will unravel for years. But for now,\u00a0let\u2019s\u00a0listen and help. And reach out to your congressional representatives to fight back against critical safety net cuts.<\/p>\n

Carmen McDonald<\/i><\/b> is an attorney who serves as executive director of the\u00a0<\/i>Centro de Justicia para Supervivientes<\/i><\/a>; she is a Public Voices Fellow of the\u00a0<\/i>OpEd Project<\/i><\/a>\u00a0and Blue Shield California.<\/i><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Publicado originalmente por Baptist News Global. Estaba sentado en el porche trasero de mi casa, viendo los primeros fuegos artificiales del 4 de julio, pero sin sentirme en absoluto patriota mientras reflexionaba sobre las redadas actuales del ICE. Casi todas las personas que conozco se ven afectadas; preguntan por sus seres queridos y se preguntan qu\u00e9 podemos hacer si los detienen. De repente, un joven apareci\u00f3 en mi patio trasero\u2026<\/p>","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-69151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survivorjusticecenter.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survivorjusticecenter.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survivorjusticecenter.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survivorjusticecenter.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survivorjusticecenter.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69151"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.survivorjusticecenter.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69151\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.survivorjusticecenter.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survivorjusticecenter.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.survivorjusticecenter.org\/es\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}