[extropy-chat] FWD (SK) Post-Traumatic Slave Disorder?

Tue Jun 1 20:52:03 UTC 2004

http://oregonlive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/news/1086004710123410.xml?oregonian?lcg

Judge rejects slave trauma as defense for killing
A Washington County judge threw out a PSU professor's novel theory at 
pretrial but said she may consider it at trial

Monday, May 31, 2004
HOLLY DANKS

HILLSBORO -- A Portland lawyer says suffering by African Americans at 
the hands of slave owners is to blame in the death of a 2-year-old 
Beaverton boy.

Randall Vogt is offering the untested theory, called post traumatic 
slave syndrome, in his defense of Isaac Cortez Bynum, who is charged 
with murder by abuse in the June 30 death of his son, Ryshawn Lamar 
Bynum. Vogt says he will argue -- "in a general way" -- that masters 
beat slaves, so Bynum was justified in beating his son.

The slave theory is the work of Joy DeGruy-Leary, an assistant professor 
in the Portland State University Graduate School of Social Work. It is 
not listed by psychiatrists or the courts as an accepted disorder, and 
some experts said they had never heard of it.

DeGruy-Leary testified this month in Washington County Circuit Court 
that African Americans today are affected by past centuries of U.S. 
slavery because the original slaves were never treated for the trauma of 
losing their homes; seeing relatives whipped, raped and killed; and 
being subjugated by whites.

Because African Americans as a class never got a chance to heal and 
today still face racism, oppression and societal inequality, they suffer 
from multigenerational trauma, says DeGruy-Leary, who is African 
American. Self-destructive, violent or aggressive behavior often 
results, she says.

Noting the theory has not been proven or ever offered in court, 
Washington County Circuit Judge Nancy W. Campbell recently threw out 
DeGruy-Leary's pretrial testimony.

But the judge said she would reconsider the defense for Bynum's 
September trial if his lawyer can show the slave theory is an accepted 
mental disorder with a valid scientific basis and specifically applies 
to this case.

"I think it can be proven," the court-appointed Vogt said after 
Campbell's ruling. "The problem is it's brand new. It's not as easy to 
present in court as something that's been established over years."

Murder-by-abuse, punishable by life in prison with 25 years before 
possible parole, means the victim suffered from a pattern of assaults. 
An autopsy found Ryshawn Bynum died of a brain injury and had a broken 
neck, broken ribs and as many as 70 whip marks on his legs, buttocks, 
back and chest that were of various ages.

Bynum told police he hit his son with a watch strap during 
potty-training. He said the day before the boy died, he was playing 
"helicopter," swinging his son around the room, when the boy hit his 
head on a table.

"He had a traditional, Southern, small-town, working-class upbringing 
where 'whuppin' was accepted," Vogt said. "Whether that was abusive or 
not, that is in the eye of the beholder. He was raised differently than 
your typical kid in Beaverton."

Experts disagree on whether post traumatic slave syndrome can be proven, 
much less accepted in legal arenas. It took 50 years for society and the 
courts to accept post traumatic stress syndrome, a diagnosis for someone 
who has experienced or witnessed an extraordinary event that involves 
actual or threatened death or serious injury. It is only diagnosed when 
functioning is severely impaired.

The judge also said the defense would have to show Bynum, who grew up in 
Mississippi, has slave syndrome. At the time of her testimony, 
DeGruy-Leary had not interviewed him.

Besides a doctorate in social work research, DeGruy-Leary has a master's 
degree in clinical psychology. She said she can offer counseling but is 
not licensed to diagnose anyone.

"Post traumatic slave syndrome is rather unique; it's not that everybody 
has it," DeGruy-Leary testified. "If you are African American and you 
are living in America, you have been impacted."

Under cross-examination by Robert Hull, Washington County senior deputy 
district attorney, DeGruy-Leary viewed Ryshawn Bynum's autopsy photos.

Calling the boy's injuries excessive, DeGruy-Leary said she would have 
reported them. But in the African American culture, such discipline "is 
extremely common," she said. "It falls in the rubric of what they think 
is normal."

A Los Angeles native, DeGruy-Leary has been working on the theory for 
two decades and said she is still a year from publishing a book on it. 
She coined the name in her 2001 dissertation on African American male 
youth violence.

She said she thinks post traumatic slave syndrome can be proven 
scientifically once the politics of race are set aside and the white 
research establishment takes time to study it.

"It's not a conversation that America wants to have," DeGruy-Leary said. 
"It's so ugly; it's so blatant."

Questioning the science

William E. Narrow, a psychiatrist who serves as associate director of 
research on the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 
said he had never heard of post traumatic slave syndrome and no one has 
proposed that it be included in the book's next edition.

Published by the American Psychiatric Association, the "DSM" is a 
courtroom bible. Judge Campbell said that if post traumatic slave 
disorder were in the DSM, she would consider it more favorably.

Narrow said the fifth edition of the diagnostic manual probably won't be 
published until 2012. In the meantime, researchers are testing new 
disorders for possible inclusion.

"To say that everybody in a particular racial or ethnic group has a 
diagnosis, I don't think it falls under what we do," Narrow said. "We 
have enough trouble as it is with people saying we are trying to make 
everybody mentally ill without trying to include something like that."

Alberto M. Goldwaser, a clinical and forensic psychiatrist, has 
testified as an expert in about 20 court cases across the country 
involving post traumatic stress, including murders.

"Maybe it's a social phenomenon and not a clinical phenomenon," he said 
in an interview from his Paramus, N.J., office, noting that he had never 
heard of post traumatic slave syndrome.

Because no African American today has been a slave, Goldwaser called the 
theory "such a stretch." He said he didn't think it would ever be 
accepted in court.

Alvin F. Poussaint, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School 
and an expert on race relations in the United States, outlined his 
version of post traumatic slave syndrome in the 2000 book "Lay My Burden 
Down."

"It is a legacy where blacks were beaten a lot and lived in terror that 
they could be killed at will," Poussaint said from his Boston office.

"That type of trauma gets passed on for generations" in an entire group, 
he said. "But in a one-on-one case, these things are hard to prove."

Although DeGruy-Leary's theory could be "viable to educate the public, I 
don't know about in a court of law," Poussaint said.

"Lawyers try everything; they might as well put it out."

***

Using this logic, I guess I'm fat because I suffer from post-traumatic
famine syndrome -- my ancestors starved, y'see. Or maybe the reason we're
all so acquisitive is that we suffer from post-traumatic poverty syndrome,
because most of our ancestors were dreadfully poor. Hey, this is fun. I'll
have to think up a few more creative excuses.

Beth Wolszon

I need money.  A long time ago my God flooded the earth and forced my 
ancestors to live in a boat for 40 days and nights. I still haven't 
recovered. I will not even go into the time where my ancestors were 
thrown out of a wonderful garden.
Signed,
White Male Xtian Fundie.
--  Todd Isaac

-- 
"Only a zit on the wart on the heinie of progress." Copyright 1992, Frank Rice

Terry W. Colvin, Sierra Vista, Arizona (USA) < fortean1 at mindspring.com >
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