Locally, they are known as “the rebels.” The eleven children who survived Victoria Soto’s classroom after witnessing the death of their teacher and fellow students will have their own emotional needs as they try to move forward. All have received counseling and several have shown symptoms of severe PTSD. “They are all on the path to healing, but it’s been a struggle to say the least,” said a class parent in touch with the families.
For the first responders who entered those two classrooms, those images will be with them for the rest of their lives. Several EMTs couldn’t go back to work, instead choosing to resign from their jobs. Many were treated for PTSD.
Eric Brown, a lawyer for the union that represents the forty-five members of the Newtown Police Department, believes up to fifteen town police officers who were in that building were in need of medical attention. “We are very concerned about the post-traumatic stress syndrome. For many of these officers, this will be with them for the remainder of their careers,” said Brown.
In the days and weeks following December 14, in attempting to deal with the trauma many officers exhausted their holiday time and paid sick leave. For some, the time off wasn’t enough to deal with what they had experienced inside the school. “They were forced to go back to work because they have mouths to feed and mortgages to pay,” said Brown. One officer decided he wasn’t coming back at all, choosing instead to retire.
No one knows what the future holds for these cops, but that day has in many ways defined them. “A lot of these officers are still running on adrenaline. We just don’t know what the long-term effects are going to be. These officers aren’t the same people today that they were when they woke up on the morning of December fourteenth. That day has become part of who they are now,” said Brown.
For everyone affected by the tragedy, the road to recovery may just be beginning. Karen Binder-Brynes, a psychologist who specializes in post-traumatic stress disorder and has worked with families in Newtown, as well as first responders following the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, believes that for many the real problems are just beginning to set in. “As time goes by the shock begins to wear off and the permanence of the event just starts to set in and that’s when we see the true damage,” she said.
In children the signs of PTSD are usually easy to spot. “You have to watch for nonverbal signs that something might be wrong. If your child is experiencing stomachaches, social behavioral changes, or losing interest in things that they were previously interested in, these are signs,” Binder-Byrnes explained.
Each child deals with trauma in a very personal way, but often when a child doesn’t outwardly express the pain it could lead to further problems, according to Binder-Brynes. “I’m more concerned about the children who experienced the trauma but are holding it in,” she said. “They need to have an outlet. The more you can see the distress the more you can react to it.
“It is a very complicated syndrome that has an effect on the biology as well as the psychology. A large portion of these people may never get back to normal, but with proper treatment and time there will be better days ahead.”
Members of the clergy are also having trouble moving forward. Many have been under tremendous pressure, as they carry the burden of their parishioners’ pain while not paying enough attention to their own grief. Months after the tragedy, the basement at St. Rose of Lima Roman Catholic Church is still full of unopened packages and boxes. The staff had been working diligently to go through all the donations, with postmaster stamps from all around the world, but the sheer amount had proved overwhelming.
“The outpouring of generosity we have seen from around the world is really touching,” Father Weiss said.
Seven months removed, Pastor Bob, as he is affectionately known around Newtown, still can’t sleep. He has large bags underneath his eyes that betray his easy smile. He is having problems functioning from day to day, but pushes on because he feels he must.
“These families are in so much pain,” said Weiss, who has nine families in his parish who lost a child that day. He presided over eight of their funerals in the week following the shooting. He has blocked out much of that day. All that remain are flashes of memories: A little girl calling out his name while sticking her finger through his belt loop as he paced around the firehouse. Driving through the back roads of Newtown at 11 P.M. in a squad car on the way to console the families after receiving final verification that their loved ones were gone. An SUV coming to an abrupt stop in the church parking lot and a dozen out-of-town college kids walking into the church at 3 A.M. to pray the rosary on the morning of December 15.
People looking to him for comfort often ask how something like this can happen in their community. Pastor Bob doesn’t have an easy answer, but he believes that as a culture we have strayed from our roots and hopes that the community, and maybe the nation, can use this tragedy to pull closer together. “We have become a culture of death. There is less and less respect for life and the dignity that every person has because we are created by God. There are all these calls for change and new laws but that is not enough.
“Change happens within each one of us and we need to change this attitude that is driving us away from everything that is right and good, everything God intended us to be in this world. We’ve become too busy for family, too busy for friends, even too busy for God. It’s about time that we remember what’s really important in life.”
In the months that followed the shooting, Father Weiss hasn’t been able to take any time off for himself. “The community needs me but I’m struggling, too,” he admits, wiping tears from his eyes.
The most painful imprint of all has been left by the children who are never coming back. For these families the pain will never go away.
“Every time there’s an event, like the last day of school, it hurts,” said Neil Heslin, who lost his son, Jesse. “You keep waiting for it to get easier but it never does.”
In Sandy Hook, there is no escaping the agony of that day. Painful reminders are on every light pole, storefront window, and car bumper. Nicole Hockley, who lost her eight-year-old son, Dylan, can’t ever escape it. “Every new detail is painful. There hasn’t been a day that’s gone by where I haven’t had to relive it.”
Hockley hasn’t stopped moving since the day her son’s life was taken. She is driven to do everything in her power to make sure no other parent has to endure the pain she feels. “Nothing will bring Dylan back. I know that. We try to live from one moment until the next,” said Hockley.
For the families of victims who have chosen to stay out of the media spotlight, a different set of challenges has arisen. For some, frustration grows at the frequent memorials still scattered about the town. “Sometimes, I just want to smash every car I see with a green ribbon,” one victim said.
One of the families refuses to walk into the local grocery store where two large green ribbons hang near the front entranceway, another painful reminder. “Everyone wants to help, and I can appreciate that, but how do you begin the process of healing?” the parent said.
Fresh wounds were also opened by a public feud over how to spend the $11 million donated to the United Way in the aftermath of the tragedy.
After a rancorous debate, it was decided that families of each of the twenty-six victims would receive $281,000. Twelve additional families of children who survived the shooting will each get $20,000, while the two teachers who were wounded will receive $150,000 to be split between them.
Local business has also been negatively affected. In the small business enclave at Sandy Hook where Church Hill Road intersects with Glen Road, business was decimated. Two popular local establishments, the Stone River Grille restaurant and the Demitasse cafe, closed their doors within a few months of the tragedy. On January 8, the state approved a $500,000 grant, the maximum allowed, to distribute among Sandy Hook businesses to help the struggling enterprises. Many are skeptical that the town will ever get back to where it was pre–December 14.
In May, a twenty-eight-member task force of elected officials voted unanimously to recommend that Sandy Hook Elementary School be demolished. In October, Newtown was allotted $50 million in state funds to rebuild the school. Shortly after, barricades were erected around the structure and security stood guard around as the solemn demolition began. The steel that supported the school’s structure was melted down, the bricks and glass were pulverized, and every small remnant hauled away to an undisclosed location until every last trace of Sandy Hook Elementary School was gone.
Questions over how and when to heal is a deeply personal one that is multifaceted. Dr. Carolyn L. Mears, an adjunct professor at the University of Denver and author of Reclaiming School in the Aftermath of Trauma, says that the repercussions from tragedies such as Newtown do not begin and end on a single day but are part of an ongoing process. “People want to know when they are going to heal, but there is no answer,” said Mears, who is also the parent of two children who survived the shooting at Columbine High School.
“When you are talking about such a wide variety of individuals, each with their own individual experience and traumas, in that regard there is no such thing as a communal healing. There are lots of different processes going on and each one has its own timetable.”
The personal path to healing for Mears, who had a life-altering experience and shift of perspective while waiting outside Columbine High School for word that her children had survived, began after she made the decision to internalize life’s fragility. “On April twentieth, my world was shattered. I lived in this bubble. I didn’t believe something like this could ever happen in my community. While standing at the school waiting for my son I realized that this was what being human really was, the uncertainty of day to day. It’s unnerving but also liberating in a sense of expanded awareness. The whole process of recovery is about accommodating your life story to what has happened to you. Not embracing it, but acknowledging what happened.”
Like Columbine, Newtown should expect to go through myriad emotions, which is all part of the process, Mears believes. “As a Columbine mom I can tell you it’s a long road. It has its challenges and stumbling blocks but it also has great potential for revealing what is absolutely beautiful about humanity, that transformative nature of trauma. It can be very positive but also, in some cases, it can never be resolved. Some of the long-lasting damage will be irreversible.
“The community image of Littletown and Columbine were shattered. In Newtown, there is a group identity that has been shattered. Reestablishing who you are, as in, as individuals, is extremely important. There will be periods of controversies, divisiveness, and anger, all of which are symptomatic of a trauma response.”
Fifteen years later people will still look at her driver’s license and mention Columbine to her, bringing back painful memories. Over time the memories begin to fade and the news cycle begins to move on, but for the community a type of permanence attaches itself to each person. In time, new challenges arise as many of the students who experienced the shooting at Columbine have families of their own and children heading off to their first day of school. She says that, united by a shared experience, the trauma breeds a stronger communal bond that most people can never understand.
“Over the passage of time we worry less, but we are always aware. I am a Columbine mom and I always will be. That is something I realized I had to live with. It’s part of my identity.”
Then there is the inevitable branding that happens to a town that is the scene of a mass tragedy. On December 14, Newtown joined an exclusive club with Virginia Tech, Aurora, and, of course, Columbine as communities associated with tragedy.
“Newtown took what happened in Columbine and brought it to the next level. We are talking about babies that were killed. It is a whole new level of horror. We didn’t want our community and school to become synonymous with mass shootings and tragedy but we didn’t have a choice, and unfortunately, neither will Newtown,” said Mears.
“For Columbine, the tragedy may have begun on April twenty, but it didn’t end that day. It goes on until this day. In Newtown, in many ways December fourteen is forever.”
In Newtown, First Selectman Pat Llodra is determined to move her community forward. After months of memorials, benefit concerts, gifts, and donations, in July Llodra announced that the town will no longer accept nonlocally sponsored donations. “We are very grateful, but it was time for us to get back to living our lives and our normal routines,” Llodra explained. Unlike other towns where mass tragedies have occurred, Newtown will not be hosting any public memorials on the one year anniversary of the shooting. The municipality has requested privacy.
Llodra recognizes that the tragedy in her hometown has changed the country in ways that may not always be easy to quantify. “This horrible event changed our social fabric in ways that aren’t always easy to see on the surface,” she said. “The policy changes will come in time, but it is also more, something greater than that.
“Every time something like this happens, it makes us kinder people. We become less quick to criticize. We become a little more open-minded.”
She insists that Newtown will not be negatively “branded” because the people will refuse to allow themselves to be defined by the “act of one evil person.”
“I truly believe the world sees us not for the horrible thing that happened to us, but for the subsequent acts of love that followed,” Llodra said. “We will never forget but we will survive, and we will thrive again.”
AFTERWORD
Over time, the memorials and shrines that once dominated Sandy Hook began to disappear. Left alone with their grief, the residents of Newtown have struggled with the same questions the rest of the country started asking after the morning of December 14. Why did Adam Lanza shoot his mother before going to Sandy Hook Elementary School and shooting twenty children and six educators before turning the gun on himself? And what can be done to prevent it from ever happening again?
As the search for answers continued, one question began to haunt the community more than the others: What could they have done to change the trajectory of that day? What if . . .
What if someone had intervened and stopped the bullying?
While at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Nancy Lanza believed her son’s Asperger’s syndrome and sensory perception disorder made him a target for bullies. She tried changing schools and was a frequent presence at school functions and meetings, but no matter how often she complained to faculty and staff, she believed no one was looking out for her fragile son.
“They tell me what they think I want to hear but no one wants to invest the time to make sure he is safe,” Nancy told one friend.
What if Richard Novia had stayed at Newtown High School?
Nancy believed she had finally found an advocate at Newtown High School in the tech club’s adviser Richard Novia. The teacher saw potential in the bright young boy. During his freshman year, he studied Adam’s condition and took him under his wing. As a sophomore it appeared that Adam was making progress.
But before Adam was to enter his junior year, Novia announced he was leaving. Nancy was devastated, fearing her son’s only protector would now be gone. Against Novia’s warnings, Nancy pulled Adam out of Newtown High School. The boy had two brief stints at college but never found the safety net that he had at the high school.
“I think about the ‘what ifs’ more than I’d like to admit,” Novia said, after a long pause. “Maybe things would have been different. I guess we will never know.
“I think Adam did what he did because he was angry at the school and wanted everyone to know,” Novia added. “His mother believed the sc
hool had failed him. It was all he had. When that was gone, he lost everything. He just sat alone in that house all day and all night.”
What if neighbors had taken more of an interest in what was going on behind the closed doors at the Lanza house?
Looking back, many neighbors now ask themselves if there was more they could have done to reach out to the Lanza family. While most residents were friendly, 36 Yogananda Street seemed like a black sheep in the neighborhood. Inside the house, Adam Lanza was sitting alone in his darkened room, hour after hour, immersed in the world of violent video games and online obsessively researching mass killers and the military. He cut off all communication with his father and brother, and as his mother began to travel more, Adam lived in complete isolation. Perhaps, many wondered, if they had just reached out, offered one kind gesture, one word of reassurance, maybe the tragedy could have been prevented?
“We all just went about our business,” one neighbor said. “I wish I could go back and reach out. I know a lot of us do.”
“Looking back there were signs that something was wrong inside that house but none of us took the time to offer real help,” another neighbor added.
What if Adam hadn’t had access to the ultraviolent images?
Thirty years ago, a person living in self-imposed seclusion like Adam Lanza would have been incapable of immersing himself so easily in the study of weapons and in mastering first-person shooting games. Today, all of the information and practical training is readily available at the click of a mouse or press of a button.
“It’s hard to imagine an Adam Lanza existing a century ago, before there was this culture of violence and depravity,” said Dr. Edward Shorter, the professor of the history of medicine and psychiatry in the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Toronto.
What if Adam didn’t have access to high-powered weaponry?
Newtown: An American Tragedy Page 21
