Burden of loss falls on thousands of children

By ANDREW BUNCOMBE

The first thing Michael Sweeney did when he learned his wife, Madeline, had died in the attack on the World Trade Center was to tell their two children.

Anna is aged 5 and Jack just 3 - criminally young to be robbed of their mother, an attendant on the hijacked American Airlines plane that was flown into the north tower.

At their home in Acton, Massachusetts, Mr Sweeney gently called his son and daughter to him and told them that their mother would not be coming home.

"They were struck by the trauma of the events," said the children's grandfather, Robert Sweeney. "But children are resilient. They bounce back quicker than adults."

Or so everyone hopes.

No one has yet done the numbers on children of victims. No one has calculated just how many were orphaned, or lost a mother, a father or an aunt or uncle who brought them up as their own.

But the rough estimates are staggering. Just from bond-trading firm Cantor Fitzgerald - which occupied four floors at the top of the north tower - 1500 children are believed to have lost a parent.

"We have never been faced with anything of this magnitude simultaneously," Ruth Kreitzman, a clinical social worker with the Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services, told the New York Times.

"Even people who have dealt with bereaved kids a lot are struggling to understand how this will be interpreted by children."

The organisation is just one of many US children's charities that are realising how the scale of their work is going to soar in the weeks, months and years ahead.

Children whose parents narrowly escaped have also been left feeling scared and vulnerable.

On a wider level, experts say, youngsters nationwide are likely to feel traumatised every time they see television footage of the attacks on New York and Washington.

Ms Kreitzman's organisation has opened emergency drop-in centres in New York where families can go to discuss their fears with social workers, psychiatrists and psychologists.

Counsellors say the signs of trauma and mourning can take months to reveal themselves.

Yesterday morning, the organisation's vice-president, Dr Alan Siskind, was helping to staff the information helpline at the centre on West 57th St in Manhattan.

"We are going to be dealing with the effect of this for years to come," he said.

Experts point out that the problem is made more difficult by post-war social trends - high divorce rates and single motherhood - that have fragmented many families.

One such single mother was 32-year-old Rosa Julia Gonzalez. As the twin towers burst into flames and started to fall, she made one final phone call to ask her sister to take care of her 12-year-old.

It seems, however, that more men than women died in the attack on New York. Like war widows, many women face an uncertain future trying to bring up their children without a father and a wage-earner. Many will be forced to sell their homes.

Ironically, the tragedy is most keenly felt by those who tried to help others. Many of the 300-plus New York firefighters who lost their lives came from traditional Irish Catholic communities with large families.

Firefighter Hector Tirado jun, though not from an Irish Catholic background, left five children ranging from 6 to 11 years.

"Their sense of loss is palpable," said Mr Tirado's uncle, Robert.

"You can just be with them and they're all sad. We try to make them play with each other and other kids, like normal kids, but you cannot avoid it."

The firefighter separated from his wife three years ago, Robert Tirado said. For the children, his death represented "losing their father twice".

Michael Cunningham, a Cantor Fitzgerald employee in his 30s, had just become a father. He had left his wife and 2-week-old son to return to work after paternity leave.

Two babies whose fathers died have been born since September 11.

The new domestic circumstances forced on relatives have also created some ugly situations.

Victim Yamel Merino had told friends she wanted her 8-year-old son, Kevin, to live with his grandmother if anything happened to her. But the boy's father wants custody.

It fell to Maureen Niciu, a friend of Ms Merino, to break the news of her death to Kevin.

"His face just dropped like his whole world had ended."

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