ABSTRACT
This article examines ways in which international research on child soldiers might serve to inform research on gang-involved youth in the United States. In particular, we discuss the importance of understanding trauma exposure and post-traumatic stress reactions as both risks for and consequences of participation in both forms of armed groups. In addition, we point to the value of expanding our view of trauma to include dimensions that have yielded important insights in the study of child soldiers, including developmental trauma disorder, perpetration-induced trauma, and the unique sequelae of sexual victimization for girls. The roles of ethnic pride and ideology, moral agency, and the processes that promote desistance and reintegration of former child soldiers and gang members are discussed. Finally, we suggest that future research on children in armed groups should give consideration not only to psychological constructs like resilience and post-traumatic growth, but to social forces that can promote prosocial behavior.
100 So… my commandante, he asked if I had already taken something like a test, to enter, I mean, I was already inside [the group] but to know if I—and so they ordered me to kill a person. I remember it well, that—that kid, I knew him, he was 17 years old, he went to the same school I went to… And so they sent me to kill him and—and I couldn’t, two days I tried, and I couldn’t, and at the end they told me that I had to do it already, and so I did it—I killed him … (Wainryb, 2011, p. 286)
I was kicking with my friends and we were all getting high on meth. My friends are Rose Park Norteños and we saw some people that had did us dirty for like $1,000 of [crystal meth]. Since I was the one who set up the deal, they gave me a .45 and told me to kill him or at least shoot at him. I didn’t think I would hit him. I started shooting and emptied the whole clip. And I knew I didn’t hit him with the first six, but the last three I knew I hit him because he started screaming. We just sped away in the car. I got tattoos for it. The OGs said I could do it. That was the first time I ever shot at somebody but it wasn’t the last. I couldn’t go to sleep, so I started tweaking it real hard.
