What the little German boy has experienced on Tenerife is barely palpable. For several hours he wandered the strange island until passersby found him, crying and in shock. He then told the police that his father had attacked his mother and brother. He escaped at the last minute.
The exact circumstances of the crime have yet to be determined, the father was arrested. But it is clear that the police found in a cave, the bodies of the mother and older brother. Currently, the bereaved boy, whose age the authorities initially say "six to seven", is cared for by social workers and psychologists.
The distance to the home presents a great challenge in caring for the child. To protect the psyche of children after extremely stressful experiences, a familiar environment is particularly important, says the director of the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy of the Berlin Charité, Isabella Heuser. "At best, that should be with someone who knows the acutely traumatized child well, such as grandparents."
Depending on their age, children could decide for themselves who they will come to, for the time being, Heuser said. The main thing is that they feel safe and in good hands. The aim is thus to counteract a loss of trust in people and the world. The boy had initially said that the grandparents or an aunt would come to the island to look after the child.
Do not urge the child to tell
It is also important to give the children time to talk instead of specifically addressing the trauma or to drill down on what exactly happened. "As a rule, one waits for what the child tells about himself", says Heuser. Police psychologists are trained to that effect - but of course often play a role in the police also time pressure. In general, it is individually different, when children begin to tell and how long an acute trauma, said the expert.
Among other things, acute trauma occurs when, like the boy, one's own life is threatened. Affected then as in shock, as in another world, frozen or completely upset, says Heuser. For children, this condition may be more pronounced, depending on their age and on their ability to grasp what has happened: "They cry, for example, can hardly articulate themselves or name their own names if asked," explains Heuser.
Studies show that after losing another parent's parent, children often suffer from stress and sequelae for a very long time. Even a long time after the experience complaints may develop, for example in the form of recurring memories, nightmares and fears. In addition, children often experience violence between their parents or against themselves before the act, as a survey in 2017 revealed.
Study with other stakeholders: developmental disorders
For the study, researchers in the Netherlands recorded 137 cases in which one parent was killed by the partner. 256 children stayed behind, on average they were 7.4 years old at the time of the act. A large proportion of the children (59 percent) were present when the crime took place. Most of those affected suffered from severe developmental disorders and mental stress, the researchers reported in the journal "PLoS One".
Of the children for whom this information was available, almost 70 percent were victims of family violence even before the crime. For another 16 percent, the scientists think this probable. It was important not only to deal with the acute experiences with the children, but also to take into account past violence experiences, the researchers demanded.
Dealing with affected children is also a great challenge for professionals. "If you ask experts involved in such a case, even years after completing the subsequent assistance, then the extraordinary responsibility to make decisions under considerable pressure of time and action, clearly felt," it says in the book of the former head of the Stuttgart youth welfare office, Susanne Heynen.
The challenge was to find good solutions in a crisis that existed for the children, although - due to the rarity of the events - there are usually no experiences or working routines. For the book Heynen and a colleague with 14 adults, where in childhood one parent had killed the other. Often the care and support of the children was not sufficient, the deed was taboo, farewell rituals were missing and the children were left alone when contacting the children with the remaining parent.
"The children actually need comprehensive support for many years, because they lost both parents, most of the time the mother was murdered and the father was imprisoned," said Heynen in an interview in 2017.