ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on the relational experiences of vulnerable populations who were in foster care and residential placement. Participants included women reported for child abuse and battered women. A qualitative, phenomenological method was used which enabled the researcher to give a voice to the participants, to tell the story of their experience in their own words, and also to synthesize the core of that experience. For these women, that essence encompassed early trauma, devising survival techniques, revictimization, and as adults, re-enactment of the earlier traumas. Clinicians should consider the possibility that behaviours they are taught to recognize as symptoms of deviant behaviour, may in fact be problem solving solutions for victims of trauma. Truancy, running away, substance abuse, and child abuse can serve as escape routes from an impossible situation. These behaviours provide the exit doors from the living hell of chronic trauma victims.
