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It is easy to slip into the assumption that perpetrator systems that deliberately induct vulnerable children in order to break down, manipulate, and control their minds occur only “over there,” in some zone of extreme civil upheaval. Africa. Asia. The Middle East. As I write this, videos flow out of Syria documenting large numbers of children, some who have only recently lost their baby teeth, being indoctrinated through physical violence and threats of mutilation to become the next wave of Jihadis.1 However, the freeway sign I drive by weekly, depicting a vulnerable local teenager, alerts me that “Human trafficking [in the Bay Area] is real!”
In September 2014, BBC News reported the arrest of “an integrated criminal underground economy using children” spreading over more than 300 European cities: the estimated number of child victims was staggering (Escritt, 2014). What is essential for these kinds of perpetrator systems to thrive is the systematic use of techniques for subjugating their victims. They rely, as well, on the relative blindness in mainstream culture to their existence. The Alchemy of Wolves and Sheep: A Relational Approach to Internalized Perpetration in Complex Trauma Survivors by Harvey Schwartz is far-sighted in its attention to the scourge of perpetrator networks in our midst. Whether it is a corrupt family system, pedophile/child pornography cartel, sex and drug trafficking network, or an authoritarian group, perpetration networks often exploit malleable child victims, causing long-lasting damage in the form of entrenched psychic structures of dissociation, internal warfare and self/other destructiveness. Their survivors appear in analytic treatment more frequently than one wants to imagine.