Greg Mellen
Neighborhoods, special projects
Neighborhoods, special projects
I am a staff writer for the Long Beach Press-Telegram, where I have worked since 2001, while artfully dodging staff cuts and avoiding wandering over to the dark side of public relations and communications. I am technically a neighborhoods reporter, but find myself handling what ever comes down the pike. I have also written a number of the paper's larger projects, including the PTSD weekend feature in conjunction with the health fellowship. I contributed to special projects from everything from religion to poverty to deportation to historic neighborhoods.
<p style="margin-bottom: 0in;">Having people open up about atrocities that would make a normal person blanch can be difficult under any circumstance. Hearing the stories in translation underscores the complexities of understanding the effects of trauma on people from utterly different cultures. </p>
<p><span>As Cambodian-Americans and children of refugees, Sin and Em carry a difficult legacy. Thei</span><span>r families display many classic symptoms of PTSD. <br /></span></p>
<p><span>Sath Om is the lone survivor. But each night she says they come to her: the spirits of her family asking for her help asking for justice.</span></p>
<p>Arun Va was a young man at the time and recruited by a Khmer Rouge cadre leader to accompany him and four women to travel to the lake. Today he almost shudders when he realized how narrowly he escaped becoming a killer.</p>
<p>Nearly 40 years later, Cambodian refugees who can bear telling their stories recall atrocities in vivid detail, with an immediacy that is palpable.</p>
<div><div>Day or night Sam Keo would be visited by his late mother and dead baby brother. Problem is, it was more than 15 years since Keo's brother had died at the age of 3 from malnutrition and eight years since his mom had died of ovarian cancer. </div></div>
<p><span>For many refugees of the Cambodian genocide, the horrors didn't end when the shooting stopped. Nor did they end when the immigrants came to the United States in search of new lives.</span></p>