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Is There A Fatal Link in Your School?

Jody Allen Crowe presents a compelling look at the silent epidemic of prenatal exposure to alcohol and the undeniable connection to school shooters. He was an elementary student in 1966 when, in his hometown high school, David Black became the first adolescent school shooter in the nation. Memories of that day stayed with the author throughout his career as an educator on reservations across the nation. When the Red Lake High School became the scene of a school shooting in 2005, Crowe was uniquely positioned to see the similarities between his hometown shooter and the Red Lake shooter, as well as the evidence of brain damage from prenatal exposure to alcohol in both cases. The Fatal Link provides a glimpse into Crowe’s twenty years of experience with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder and reveals the connection between school shooters and their mother’s drinking patterns.

I saw a clear link between the violent actions of the gang and the FASD kids in our school. The gang members, with very few exceptions, were the kids who exhibited behaviors consistent with heavy prenatal exposure to alcohol. The environmental factors of their lives clearly exacerbated their propensity to be involved in wrongdoing.

What I was experiencing, but didn’t fully understand, was that physical deformities are not the only evidence of damage caused by prenatal exposure to alcohol. I was looking for the physical evidence of facial indicators and linking what I saw to the accompanying exhibition of brain damage. A psychologist friend urged me to attend a workshop put on by Dr. Ann Streissguth, one of the preeminent researchers in FASD. She is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, at the University of Washington School of Medicine. As a licensed clinical psychologist with a specialty in behavioral teratology, she has studied the effects of prenatal exposure to alcohol for over 30 years. Two hours of listening to Dr. Anne Streissguth further opened my eyes and confirmed what I was seeing in the classrooms and hallways of the schools.

Her entire presentation was focused on the brain damage of fetal alcohol exposure without any accompanying physical indicators. She presented animal research studies exposing the extent of brain damage suffered by fetally exposed animals that did not have the revealing facial features of Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Her presentation was powerful and life changing for me. Now I could see clearly. The greater share of the damage was hidden from view, hiding behind the social mores of the society, seemingly acting in collaboration with the makers of alcohol, damaging without showing how and where, keeping the populace in the dark, growing within the population like a hidden virus.

This powerful little lady described a scientific study of rats and how prenatal exposure to their brains impacted their ability to control their impulses. A study, replicated to ensure consistent results, revealed significant brain damage at levels of exposure that does not result in facial deformities, a condition called Fetal Alcohol Effects (FAE).