Benjamin Perks | Love Is the One Thing that Solves Everything (S10-E4)

[00:00:00] Melissa Fleming

Driven by optimism. That's how my guest this week describes himself despite a childhood marked by abuse, spent in care homes and on the streets.

 

[00:00:11] Benjamin Perks

I think it was very clear that we were in a bad spot, that I had been dealt a bad hand, but I was somehow optimistic that things would be better.

 

[00:00:30] Melissa Fleming

Benjamin Perks is the Head of Campaigns and Advocacy at the United Nations Children’s Fund, or UNICEF, where he works to end violence against children globally. From the United Nations, I'm Melissa Fleming. This is Awake at Night. Welcome, Ben.

 

[00:00:55] Benjamin Perks

Thank you. Great to be here.

 

[00:00:57] Melissa Fleming

Ben, you've worked to protect children for many years, and this work is very personal for you and has a lot of personal significance. Your own childhood in the UK was difficult. Can you tell me what happened to you.

 

[00:01:15] Benjamin Perks

Yeah. I spent a large part of my life in the care system. It was quite violent, quite scary. And obviously without the protection of a parent. So, you know, a risk of things like gang recruitment and exploitation. And also, you know, I was thrown out of school. I got into trouble. And just, yeah, what you would generally call a train wreck of a childhood, quite frankly. Yeah.

 

[00:01:46] Melissa Fleming

You said you were in a care system. You started out living with a family. What was that family life like?

 

[00:01:53] Benjamin Perks

You know, I can't remember an enormous amount of it. Often what happens with kids affected by trauma is that we block it. So I didn't really feel like I knew my family very well, although I spent the first half of my childhood with them. I have some memories that come to the surface sometimes. But I recently found a relative a few years ago and asked about my family, and she shared this story about the way that there was a lot of violence, addiction within the family much broader. And I kind of came to the conclusion that my situation was just the outcome of a lot of intergenerational violence and trauma. And that's why I ended up where I did.

 

[00:02:40] Melissa Fleming

How old were you?

 

[00:02:43] Benjamin Perks

Ten. Yeah. Yeah.

 

[00:02:44] Melissa Fleming

And were you alone or did you have...?

 

[00:02:46] Benjamin Perks

Alone, yes.

 

[00:02:47] Melissa Fleming

You were an only child.

 

[00:02:48] Benjamin Perks

Yes.

 

[00:02:51] Melissa Fleming

Can you remember that first day moving into that care?

 

[00:02:56] Benjamin Perks

Yeah. I was in two children's homes. The first one was for younger kids, and it was... I vaguely remember it.  It was a children's home with about 20 children in, five to a room, two care staff on any given shift. You didn't particularly have a strong bond with any individual one of them. And I think they probably tried to meet the basic needs of the child - to make sure you were fed, and you were clothed and clean.

 

And then when I was a little bit older, I was transferred to a boys’ home for teenagers. And that was quite violent and scary. I remember that quite well. And I've been, you know, through quite a bit of counseling over the years and more memories have come back. So I kind of have more of a picture for that. And it was a place where, you know, when you would close your eyes to sleep at night, you would be frightened of being punched in the face. Some of the staff also were violent. They practiced violence and violent discipline. This was the 1980s, so it was a different world then.

 

[00:04:07] Melissa Fleming

In London?

 

[00:04:08] Benjamin Perks

I grew up in London and Birmingham. So in both places, yeah. It was a situation where you felt completely unsafe and completely unloved. And yeah. And that's just the way it was. It was about meeting the basic needs. You would have moments of kindness. And then eventually I had a teacher that showed an interest in me and that made all the difference in my life because it turned my really toxic stress into tolerable stress. And I was able to imagine a pathway to something away from the violence that I was surrounded by.

 

[00:04:45] Melissa Fleming

Yeah, I want to talk about your teacher in a bit. But I imagine that during that time you were also going to school. So you were living in the care facility and during the day you would go to a school?

 

[00:05:03] Benjamin Perks

Yes, I was. But I was not doing well at school, and I got kicked out of a couple of schools. And so, you know, when you are in that situation, first, it's very hard to learn because, you know, you're in a situation of constant fear. And then also you're getting into bad behavior, you know, gangs and all of that. So I started off at a grammar school, which was for poor but bright kids, or working class but bright kids. I lasted about a year there. I went to another school. I lasted about a year and a half at a third school. And finally I ended up in school that was the end of the line. That was only for kids that were living in children's homes, kids that were primarily likely to go into, you know, a lifetime of gangs and all of that kind of stuff.

 

[00:05:56] Melissa Fleming

I understand during that time you also lived on the streets?

 

[00:06:00] Benjamin Perks

Yes. The children's home was so violent that I would run away from there, and, yeah, I would sleep on the streets for a few days at a time. Sometimes weeks or months. It felt safer to be living in a squat or on a park bench than to be in a children's home at times. This is one of the major drivers of homelessness at the time in the UK - that kids would run away from violent children's homes.

 

[00:06:24] Melissa Fleming

Did you think at the time that this was how every child lived, or did you realize that you were in a particularly difficult spot?

 

[00:06:33] Benjamin Perks

Yeah, I think it was very clear that we were in a bad spot. That I was in a bad... That I had been dealt a bad hand. But I was somehow optimistic that things would be better.

 

[00:06:46] Melissa Fleming

So you always thought that somehow there was a rainbow at the end of this?

 

[00:06:52] Benjamin Perks

Yeah. One of my favorite stories that I remember about this time was that every morning in the children's home, I would go to the letterbox. I expected a letter to come from my parents or somebody else saying, 'This has all been a terrible mistake. We're coming to collect you.' Of course, it never came. But I still went and checked every day. And I explained this recently to my wife, Anna, and she thought it was very sad, but I thought actually it was a symbol of the optimism that I still held through all of that struggle.

 

[00:07:26] Melissa Fleming

Something innate in you.

 

[00:07:28] Benjamin Perks

I don't know. We never know where it comes from. But I know that I was optimistic. I knew that things would be okay in the end.

 

 

[00:07:33] Melissa Fleming

Did you ever hear anything from your parents during that time?

 

[00:07:39] Benjamin Perks

Bits and pieces, occasionally, but nothing consistent.

 

[00:07:42] Melissa Fleming

You did end up at that kind of last resort, last chance school. And I believe you were struggling then until you had one particular encounter with a teacher. Can you describe that.

 

[00:07:58] Benjamin Perks

Yeah. Her name is Jan Rapport. We're in touch to this day and she just really was the first adult that had a conversation with me where she listened to me, and I listened to her. And I think she saw something in me. And I think it may be even the beginnings of the idealism that drives a UN career potentially. And so she gave me a book to read, and then she just started having conversations with me. And this, for most kids, might be quite normal, but for me, it was a revolution. I didn't come from a situation where kids had conversations, where you were listened to by an adult.

 

[00:08:38] Melissa Fleming

You were never listened to.

 

[00:08:40] Benjamin Perks

I think not by my parents, not in a children's home. No. No.

 

 

[00:08:47] Melissa Fleming

How did that feel for you when she listened to you and took you seriously and offered you books?

 

[00:08:53] Benjamin Perks

I think that... I mean, I didn't know at the time. I probably felt very happy at the time. But what it did was, it made me feel like I mattered as an individual, which I never felt in my entire life before. And that was a game changer for me.

 

[00:09:14] Melissa Fleming

Did you ever get the chance to tell her that?

 

[00:09:16] Benjamin Perks

Yes. So, many years later, as an adult, I came across an educationalist at Harvard explaining that often when kids are in deep trouble, it's teachers that help to get them back on track. And if we could bottle that skill and make it practiced by every teacher, we'd have a huge impact in the world. So I walked out of that lecture and began searching for my teacher. And I found her, and I went and met her and told her that.

 

[00:09:50] Melissa Fleming

How did she react?

 

[00:09:52] Benjamin Perks

I think it was quite emotional. You know, it was... I don't think she hears back very often from children from that situation. And also, I mean, I went to her, and I said, 'This is what I've done with my life.' By that time, I was a Representative in UNICEF and Acting Resident Coordinator of the UN. It was like quite a prestigious role, and I was able to tell her that I wouldn't be there doing that without her, that she had transformed my life. And I still see her now to this day. We took our son to meet her in the summertime. Yeah.

 

[00:10:31] Melissa Fleming

How did you...? I'm just wondering, right after that, you started reading books and then you managed to graduate from high school. And what happened after that?

 

[00:10:40] Benjamin Perks

I didn't graduate from high school.  I started reading a lot. And that also changed my life because I found myself in literature. I think it's James Baldwin that says that you think that you're the only person living through this pain, and then you read Dostoevsky or somebody else, and it helps you recognize that, you know, so many people are living through trauma and through pain. So that was revolutionary in my life.

 

And then I became a full-time campaigner at 16 at the National Association of Young People in Care in London. And we were the group that led to the reform of the law. As young people, young adults, we went to the House of Parliament, and we convinced the government to change the law on children in care. So, for example, one of the things we changed was you wouldn't have your own clothes. The clothes were just going to the laundry and whatever came out, you be given it. Yeah. So things like the protection of children to have their own identity, their own clothes, their own, you know, to have access to their files, to have a social worker that would protect their best interests. All things that were aligned with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, which also came into force around the same time. And obviously that was something that changed my life because I became a campaigner.

 

[00:12:10] Melissa Fleming

That must have been very gratifying. How long did it take to make that or to implement that change?

 

[00:12:16] Benjamin Perks

Well, the law... We were working there in the mid-80s or late '86 and the law came into being in 1989. It was the 1989 Childcare Act. You know the CRC came in I think the year after. Yeah, it was. I was a teenager, and I was going to the House of Lords and talking about this stuff, and I couldn't quite believe it. Yeah.

 

[00:12:37] Melissa Fleming

And then in the evening, you'd go back to the care home and sleep.

 

[00:12:40] Benjamin Perks

No. I lived independently at 16. Yeah, I left the children's home at 16 and I was an adult at 16. I'd actually started working a couple of years earlier doing, you know, odd jobs and stuff, especially when I'd run away from the children's home. But at 16, I was living and paying my own rent, cooking my own meals and doing this job.

 

[00:12:58] Melissa Fleming

Wow. And then what happened?

 

[00:13:02] Benjamin Perks

So, I worked for a couple of years for this organization, and I did some bits and pieces. And I, you know, began a relationship. And my girlfriend was at university and she kind of said it'd be a very good idea if you went to university. So I went to... I didn't have high school qualifications, but because of the work I'd been doing with the National Association of Young People in Care, the university agreed to interview me, and they gave me a place in a course. So I did. Yeah, that's what I did.

 

[00:13:29] Melissa Fleming

Wonderful. Did you feel like...? How did you feel as a student there with your background as compared to the other students?

 

[00:13:39] Benjamin Perks

Yeah, you know, there's a lot of stigma and shame about being from my background. I felt stigmatized by it, but I didn't want to hide it. I had gang tattoos on my arms, these homemade tattoos, you know, they were very common in children's homes at the time. Yeah, I just did my best to get through. I had to work quite hard outside of the study hours when other students were partying. I had to work because I didn't have the support of a family. But yeah, I did find myself at home there as well. I loved the fact that you would debate ideas and read literature. Things that I hadn't had the chance to do as a kid, I was now able to do, you know, all day. And I enjoyed, I think.

 

[00:14:33] Melissa Fleming

When did you realize that you probably went through some severe trauma and that you needed to get into counseling?

 

[00:14:42] Benjamin Perks

That's a lot later. That's in early middle age, because I...  So I was working as a UNICEF Representative in Montenegro.

 

[00:14:56] Melissa Fleming

Okay. Well, first of all, then maybe how did you get to be working at UNICEF?

 

[00:15:03] Benjamin Perks

That's a very funny story, actually. Okay. That's a... Then we'll go back to... At the end of my first year at university...

 

[00:15:09] Melissa Fleming

I just assumed probably at university, you realized, 'Oh my God! I had such a traumatic... I need counseling. I need to...' There was nothing like that there.

 

[00:15:17] Benjamin Perks

No, not at all. Not at all. It was just something, you just got on and did it. People didn't talk about mental health those days the way they do now. And so how did I join UNICEF? Well, it's quite a funny story. I did the first year of university and I became very passionate about... Actually, I find my idealism and my beliefs aligned very much with the things that I was learning about the American civil rights movement and Martin Luther King and Gandhi. I did a lot of writing about nonviolence and civil disobedience and Walden and all of that. And then I came across this guy called Ralph Bunche, who, you know, he is a hero, historic hero to most of us that work for the UN. He came from the civil rights movement, but then became the senior UN official at the very beginning of the UN journey. And somebody that, yeah, he's got an amazing life.

 

And at the same time, the war was breaking out in former Yugoslavia. And I wanted to go and do some voluntary work. So I signed up for a voluntary programme through an association in London that sends young people to work in refugee programmes. And it was based in Slovenia, which was adjacent to all the countries affected by the war. But I also wanted to do a story about UNICEF's work for a local thing at a university. And so I reached out to the UNICEF National Committee, and they said, 'Well, can you just send us your CV because we like to announce journalists.' I wasn't a journalist. I was a student. But they thought I was a journalist. They sent my CV.

 

And so I raised money. And I went to Zagreb from London on the bus. I went on the bus with this backpack, a very kind of young, clueless 20-year-old. And I arrived and I called the UNICEF office. And the woman said, 'When can you start?' She was French. 'When can you start? We are waiting for you.' And I was like, 'In a couple of weeks.' I had no idea what she was talking about, but I said, 'I could, well I'd better start in a couple of weeks.' And so I went to do my youth programme, my refugee programme, and then I went to the UNICEF office, and I found out they were looking to recruit somebody to work one day a week just to edit English documents. I went in seven days a week, worked round the clock, took a year off from university. Ended up being sent to central Bosnia to run a very small field operation distributing items, and then went back to university the following year.

 

And to this day, I have no idea if that woman thought I was someone else. I have no idea. But I ended up going back the following year, which was a very intense time because it was the fall of Srebrenica. It was a time where they needed a lot of support. And then I finished my bachelor's and later my master's and I managed to get back in full time with UNICEF on the basis of, you know, the reputation and the network that I'd managed to build in my university days. So that's how I came back in. And I, yeah, I've stayed in ever since.

 

[00:18:40] Melissa Fleming

And did you feel like you had chosen the right profession then? In a way, kind of coming full circle that now as somebody who wasn't protected as a child, you are now working on child protection.

 

[00:18:54] Benjamin Perks

Yeah, I think so. I think the reason I was drawn to that work was, one, because I was an idealistic person, but I was also very pragmatic. I wanted to achieve results. I wanted results that you could measure and see the change in people's lives at scale. And that was what UNICEF provided.

 

 

[00:19:16] Melissa Fleming

You served in a number of countries. You mentioned in the Balkans, but you also worked in Afghanistan. When were you there and what was that like?

 

[00:19:26] Benjamin Perks

That was from 2001 to like 2003, 2004. And it was the end of 23 years of war. It was a hopeful time. There was the Loya Jirga, and they did this democratic process in Afghanistan. And it was decided that the first peace dividend for the Afghan people would be to get their kids into school. So probably in the history of the country, never than more than 10% of children had been in school. And we had this huge operation to get kids into school at scale. There was no school system. You know, we had to bring in a lot of supplies. We had to set up school, help local people, set up schools in used factories, under trees, in tents, in caves. We had to help to train anybody that graduated high school in a very condensed period to become a teacher. We had to deliver supplies via camel train, or by donkey train. It was intensive, round the clock work.

 

And then on March the 23rd, 2002 was the first day of school. And I think we had all collapsed, exhausted, trying to get everything in place and woke up that morning to see the streets full of children on their way to the school, many of them girls for the first time. And that, you know… I have friends who work in many other rewarding types of jobs. But that feeling, I don't think anybody ever has that. That was incredible. That was an incredible feeling.

 

[00:21:10] Melissa Fleming

That must have been a beautiful sight.

 

[00:21:13] Benjamin Perks

Yeah. Yeah. And I went to go and visit some of the schools and some... You know, a lot the kids would ask us questions. And many years later, one of the children, one of the young adults who had been a child in one of the schools, wrote to me to tell me that she started studying medicine. I don't know how many lives were changed through that, but that was an incredible experience.

 

[00:21:42] Melissa Fleming

I mean, you said that many, many of those children that UNICEF and you and your team managed to get in school were girls.

 

[00:21:51] Benjamin Perks

Yes.  

 

[00:21:51] Melissa Fleming

And I believe that it was even challenging at that time. We know what has happened now, but the culture was not necessarily encouraging of bringing girls to school. What was that like? How did you deal with that and overcome that kind of barrier?

 

[00:22:08] Benjamin Perks

I think that what was really important was to understand where people come from. You know, it's often you will speak about an issue that, you know, can get pushback from traditionalists. You have to find ways to communicate. So one of the big things that we did with speaking to religious leaders, was explaining that if girls don't learn to read and write, they're not, as young adults, going to be able to access information on safe delivery and safe maternal and child health. And that's going to have an impact on their health that is a risk for the family.

 

You know, bringing an understanding. Obviously, we as UN people believe that every child has a right to learn, has an equal right to learn to a boy. But if you're committed to the outcome, which is to make sure that happens, you have to be able to meet people where they are and have that conversation on their own terms. I've learned that again and again and again in advocacy and communications with traditionalists and religious leaders. In a polarized world, it's so important that we engage all constituencies.

 

[00:23:17] Melissa Fleming

Just fast forwarding for a moment to this time. It must be especially painful for you to see how girls are stripped of that possibility.

 

[00:23:30] Benjamin Perks

Yes, I think it is catastrophic for this generation, but I also believe that what happened then holds. You can't take away what people learn. So there are a generation of young women and girls in Afghanistan that already have the knowledge and the learning they otherwise wouldn't have. And that's a great asset for the future of the country.

 

[00:23:56] Melissa Fleming

Did any of these experiences, I mean, in Afghanistan or anywhere else where you were working bring back memories of your own childhood?

 

[00:24:05] Benjamin Perks

I think that I had a huge sense of purpose in his work and that helped maybe to distract a little bit from the things I hadn't really fully resolved in myself.

 

[00:24:16] Melissa Fleming

And that sense of purpose maybe came, though, from those unresolved memories.

 

[00:24:23] Benjamin Perks

Yeah, I always had an enormous sense of urgency. I always had this driving sense of urgency. I always was really focused on the outcome. And I think that comes from my own childhood. You can never fully know where these things come from, but I think it comes from my own childhood.

 

[00:24:38] Melissa Fleming

How would you define childhood adversity?

 

[00:24:41] Benjamin Perks

So we use... There's now a scientific - sorry, it's a boring word - methodology in which you take ten forms of distress that occur within the home, and we measure how many of those adverse child experiences somebody's had. And we can then see the link between them and the negative life outcomes.

 

They are in three groups. The first one is physical, sexual, emotional violence. The second one is emotional and physical neglect. And the third is a group of things like family dysfunction, addiction, violence between parents, undiagnosed mental health. And the more of those a child experiences, the more likely they are to have poor mental health, be addicted, be affected by crime as a victim or perpetrator, to have negative health outcomes. Almost every single well-being indicator is much worse.

 

[00:25:52] Melissa Fleming

You didn't mention war in that formula. And I know that UNICEF is deeply, deeply concerned and also very active in theaters of war like in Gaza or in Sudan, in Ukraine. What do you think of when you think of those children? What are they going through?

 

[00:26:14] Benjamin Perks

Well, it's catastrophic. It's unbearable pain. It is something that may have lasting effects on their lives. And it's made all the worse by the fact that we seem to be backsliding on humanitarian law, respect for humanitarian law and humanitarian protection. The reason adverse child experiences are different to that is because it is the buffer of the family that protects something horrible that happens from becoming a lasting trauma. So one of the things that's really important in conflict zones is to ensure that parents are able to protect... And schools and other institutions are able to protect and support their children in the context of armed violence and conflicts.

 

[00:27:05] Melissa Fleming

I'm just wondering when you're thinking about childhood trauma in the field of conflict, war, but also in other areas, what is keeping you awake at night?

 

 

[00:27:16] Benjamin Perks

I think that we are the first generation that can end child trauma overall. We're the first generation that can end toxic stress that drives child trauma. You know, the UN, one of the proudest achievements of the UN in the 1980s was the child survival revolution. Many people forget but in 1982, only 20% of the world's children were vaccinated against the major five childhood diseases. There was a... Yes, and there was a belief at last that we could vaccinate all children in the world. And so there was a huge debate between UNICEF and WHO [World Health Organization] at the time about whether we should have a really strong focus on vaccines and one or two interventions, or if we needed to keep pushing on a whole range of different things in the health system.

 

In the end, it was agreed to have this very sharp focus to make sure that every child in the world could access a vaccine. Every parent had knowledge about breastfeeding. All children had their growth monitored and rehydration salts to protect from diarrhoeal diseases were universally available. That reduced child mortality by 61%. Vaccine coverage increased from 20% of the world's children to 80% of the world's children within a decade. We can do this.

 

Today at the first ever international conference on violence, we in the outcome document agreed that we needed to have three interventions to end violence against children. The first one was universal support for parents, parenting programmes, where parents learn the skills to build a strong attachment with their child. Secondly, schools that protect children but also made sure children feel safe, soothed and seen as I was by my teacher. And thirdly, to have adequate response services. So when the children fall through the cracks of the family and a school, the system is ready to pick them up, protect them and get them back on to a pathway to recovery. And if we could make those three things universally available, we believe that we can eradicate child trauma.

 

[00:29:30] Melissa Fleming

It's interesting that you said this is what keeps you awake at night. Actually, what has been done amazingly and what can be done.

 

[00:29:39] Benjamin Perks

This is the same guy that was the kid that went to the letterbox every morning. I'm driven by optimism despite having come from adversity.

 

[00:29:47] Melissa Fleming

Safe, seen and soothed.

 

[00:29:49] Benjamin Perks

So the idea is safe is no harm. Seen is that you matter as an individual because people are invested in you. They know you. They know your name. They know... Yeah, you're known. And the third thing is soothed when you need to be. And this is because trauma is intergenerational, is passed intergenerationally.

 

[00:30:10] Melissa Fleming

I've heard of that before, like from Holocaust survivors. 

 

[00:30:13] Benjamin Perks

You know, I've done a chapter in my book about Holocaust survivors and the descendants of slaves and Native American Indians. And all of the science shows in psychology that... You know, the research and the psychology has shown that it's passed. But now we have genetics. Here in New York some of the best research with Holocaust survivors shows the way that our epigenetic makeup is affected intergenerationally by trauma. So what we're trying to do is treat trauma like an endemic. Because it's always been around. It's not a new epidemic. It's an endemic thing that you can break the transition through these three interventions that I mentioned.

 

[00:31:01] Melissa Fleming

You can break that intergenerational passing on if you have those three interventions.

 

 

[00:31:10] Benjamin Perks

Yeah. Let me give you a personal example. It's not just those three interventions. So I grew up in a children's home. I was deeply traumatized.  I didn't really address it until much later. But when I did, I felt completely different about life. I was able to have much better quality of relationships. I then had a son. And when I held my son in my arms, I knew that what had happened to me was now unimaginable to myself. And I would walk the ends of the earth to make him feel safe and loved. And I knew that that intergenerational cycle had been broken.

 

So that made me ask the question, 'If I can heal from it, if I can recover and not transmit it to my child, can we do this for the whole of humanity? Can this be something that we treat as a public health campaign?' And when I speak to the world's leading scientists on this, when I speak to my colleagues at WHO or within UNICEF, we all agree that it's possible.

 

[00:32:14] Melissa Fleming

How did you heal? Was therapy important for you?

 

[00:32:20] Benjamin Perks

Yes. I was a UNICEF Representative. I'd just become a UNICEF Representative. I'd been working in different types of places on conflict, on health systems, on a whole range of other issues. And I found myself at a conference in Montenegro where I was a UNICEF Representative, and it was about deinstitutionalization. And it was a guy speaking about how kids that grow up in institutional care, they often end up in situations where they can't form healthy relationships. They keep things bottled up inside of them. They often keep a distance from other people. They have a struggle with intimacy and all of that.

 

And I sat there, and I realized that he was talking about me. I was a dignitary there. I was there with the minister. I was wearing a suit. All these cameras were on us. We were on the same platform as him. And I felt myself go almost bright red.  I was shrinking into my suit because I just felt he was telling my story. And so I walked out of there at the break, excused myself from the minister, and I immediately called a friend who I knew had been seeing a counselor. I asked for the number, and I called and booked an appointment before I could change my mind. And I kept to it, and I went to see the counselor.

 

And, you know, it was the start of a journey that lasted a year. I went every week. I had psychotherapy. And then I started doing other things like mindfulness. I started being kinder to myself. I had put a lot of pressure on myself. And the world just went from black and white to colour. All of this was buttoned up inside of me. It wasn't something that was necessarily visible to the outside world, but I realized that I was missing so much from life. Keeping all this stuff within. Yeah. And that was it. That was my story. So that at the end of that process, that's when I asked myself, 'If I can heal from this, can we not prevent it in the first place for every child?'

 

 

[00:34:33] Melissa Fleming

And I understand you're married and you mentioned your little son. How did you meet your wife?

 

[00:34:39] Benjamin Perks

We met in Macedonia. I was working there, and, yeah, she...

 

[00:34:43] Melissa Fleming

So it was during that time that you were healing.

 

[00:34:46] Benjamin Perks

Sometime afterwards. Yeah.

 

[00:34:48] Melissa Fleming

And that opened yourself up to being able to have a relationship.

 

[00:34:54] Benjamin Perks

Yeah, I think. I think I was kind of in, like, the James Bond type attachment style where you just, like, where you're bulletproof. You know, nobody can...  You know, you're social, but you can't really get close to anybody. And I think that after the healing I went through a real transformation in my own life. And I felt like I was ready for a relationship. And when you're ready, I think it, yeah, it changes.

 

[00:35:27] Melissa Fleming

What's your son's name?

 

[00:35:28] Benjamin Perks

Noah.

 

[00:35:29] Melissa Fleming

Noah.

 

[00:35:30] Benjamin Perks

Yeah.

 

[00:35:31] Melissa Fleming

And how old is he now?

 

[00:35:33] Benjamin Perks

Two and a half.

 

[00:35:33] Melissa Fleming

Wonderful. If you had a chance to go back to the young Ben Perks, what would you say to him?

 

[00:35:49] Benjamin Perks

I'd say... Yeah, this is quite personal. I'd say that it's... You know, the way... I think it was Bill Clinton who said, 'It's the economy, stupid.' I would say, 'It's relationships, stupid.' Right? Like, so healing comes from relationships normally. I mean, people can have therapy, but it's the relationships that are the buffer against trauma.

 

And I'd probably tell him not to go on a UN career where you go around the world. Because, you know, in that situation, it would have made more sense for me to have stayed in one place, to have... Don't get me wrong. It's the best... The UN is the best organization to work for in the world, especially my agency, UNICEF. I'm very happy I did.

 

But I think for people, giving advice to people now, young people from care backgrounds, it's - try and stay within your community, form bonds. You heal through relationships. Because I think that what I did as a young guy was with say to myself, 'If I get through university, if I get a proper career, if I do okay, it will solve everything.' But it doesn't because the only thing that really solves anything is love, is connection, is relationships.

 

 

[00:37:00] Melissa Fleming

Is there anything that we can all do? I mean, you mentioned the roles of care homes, of teachers, of parents. You know, how can we...? It probably takes a village, takes the whole world to heal childhood trauma.

 

[00:37:16] Benjamin Perks

I think the first thing to do is to recognize that more than half of us have grown up with some form of adverse childhood experience. All the data sets show that around 57% of the population have had one adverse childhood experience. Kids from care are the very visible tip of a largely submerged iceberg. So everybody around you, 1 in 2 of them have been affected by some form of adversity. And about 1 in 5 have been affected by severe adversity.

 

We know that many more people than we previously thought were affected by child sexual abuse. And we know that these things are the major driver of obesity, addiction, the inability to form relationships. All of these things are largely driven by the fact that our development as children is distorted. So there's no such thing as a trauma neutral workplace, school or organization. So we have to show compassion to the people that we're faced with, even when they're objectionable because we never know where they come from. We never know what they're dealing with.

 

[00:38:31] Melissa Fleming

Compassion, I guess, is the is the final word. Thanks so much, Ben, for telling us your story and about the amazing work that you do.

 

[00:38:39] Benjamin Perks

Thank you so much. Thank you.

 

[00:38:43] Melissa Fleming

Thank you for listening to Awake at Night. We'll be back soon with more incredible and inspiring stories from people working against huge challenges to make this world a better and safer place.

 

To find out more about the series and the extraordinary people featured, do visit un.org/awake-at-night. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts and please take the time to review us. It helps more people to find the show.

 

Thanks to my editor Bethany Bell, to Adam Paylor, Josie Le Blond, and my colleagues at the UN: Katerina Kitidi, Roberta Politi, Geneva Damayanti, Tulin Battikhi, Bissera Kostova, Anzhelika Devis, and Carlos Macias. The original music for this podcast was written and performed by Nadine Shah and produced by Ben Hillier. Additional music was by Pascal Wyse.