Fashioning Charel

A documentary about resilience

This story is for black and brown girls who have experienced some sort of abuse in the home – physical abuse, sexual abuse, and incest.It’s not a hollywood tale with a prince that saves the day.It is a real story of survival, of resilience, and of continued hard work to move forward against a backdrop of trauma that no one deserved to endure, yet one that too many many children and young adults do today.In 2021, the most recent year U.S. gov't. statistics are available, 3,016,000 children were the subject of a child welfare agency response, of which an estimated 600,000 were determined to be victims of maltreatment.

Watch the trailer

Charel's Story

When Charel was born, she had to be removed from her mother’s custody because of her mother’s substance abuse issues. Two years later her mother regained custody and Charel began an up and mostly down childhood filled with complex trauma from those closest to her who were supposed to instead be protecting her, including neglect, emotional, physical and sexual abuse.Her mother was arrested multiple times, including for abusing Charel, yet Charel was never removed from her care again.

At age 16, Charel took charge of her life. She requested to leave her mother’s ‘care’ and return to foster care. At first a relief, she soon began to move between 10+ families over the next 2 years, sinking deeper into a toxic and abusive environment she seemed unable to escape.

At 24, Charel began to see a path forward, and she dearly wanted to not inflict on her children what she’d endured. She began a new job and a mysterious calling from God encouraged her to buy a sewing machine even though she’d never touched one. Could fashion be her way out of the ‘hood?

Now 27, she strives against long odds to be the best mother she can be, to keep her children and to break her family's multi-generational cycle of mothers having their children removed.

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs)

What Charel endured has been extensively researched in the last 20-30 years. Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are “potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood.”(1). The U.S. Centers for Disease Control explains :
ACEs include:
- Experiencing violence, abuse, or neglect
- Witnessing violence in the home or community
- Having a family member attempt or die by suicideAlso included are aspects of the child’s environment that can undermine their sense of safety, stability, and bonding. Examples can include growing up in a household with:
- Substance use problems
- Mental health problems
- Instability due to parental separation
- Instability due to household members being in jail or prison.The greater the number and frequency of ACEs, the greater the negative impact is to the healthy growth and development of the child, and also the likelihood of long-term impacts.From the CDC:
ACEs and associated social determinants of health, such as living in under-resourced or racially segregated neighborhoods, can cause toxic stress. Toxic stress, or extended or prolonged stress, from ACEs can negatively affect children’s brain development, immune systems, and stress-response systems. These changes can affect children’s attention, decision-making, and learning.Children growing up with toxic stress may have difficulty forming healthy and stable relationships. They may also have unstable work histories as adults and struggle with finances, jobs, and depression throughout life. These effects can also be passed on to their own children.Charel experienced all of the examples listed above and many more that aren’t listed. Her ACEs score would have placed her in the top percentiles of impacted youth in the U.S. (2).How did Charel manage to make it through that onslaught of trauma?

Charel’s Extraordinary Resilience

Resilience is a combination of nature and a set of ‘protective factors’ that exist to mitigate the impact of the adverse experiences (3), including:
- Close relationships with competent caregivers or other caring adults
- Parental resilience
- Caregiver knowledge and the use of positive parenting skills
- Having a sense of purpose (through faith, culture, identity, etc.)
- Individual competencies (problem solving skills, self–regulation, autonomy, etc.)
- Opportunities to connect socially
- Practical and available support services for parents and families
- Communities that value people and support health and personal growthThese protective factors have been shown to have an explicit positive impact in reducing the negative effects of traumatic childhood experiences (4).Fashioning Charel highlights many of the key factors that surely benefited Charel throughout her life:
- Her initial placement for 2 years in a relatively stable foster home
- A fortunate close relationship with another adult
- Close friends
- Her problem-solving skills and autonomy
- Her faith
- Her pursuit of fashion and her mentoring job

Why this documentary matters now

Adverse Childhood Experiences remain a major health crisis. “ACEs are the single greatest unaddressed public health threat facing our nation today,” said Dr. Robert Block, former president of the American Academy of Pediatrics.In a direct raw way, Charel’s story illustrates the traumatic experiences and protective factors that have enabled Charel to survive and thrive. While it depicts an underserved community, the experiences are relatable to a wide swath of young people today. We believe this story can be an inspiration for youth who have gone through similar experiences.We also feel it can be a valuable complement to bring ACEs and resilience statistics and theories to life – an important learning tool for professionals working in related fields (clinicians, workers in trauma-informed care).

Our Goals for the Film

Our goal is for the film to help young girls and women who have undergone similar trauma, either directly or indirectly as the recipient of trauma-informed care. We are pursuing two parallel paths:1. Inspiring hope: we are working to build relationships with direct care providers who can share the film with youth in relevant settings and facilitate healthy and productive discussions (residential treatment facilities, juvenlile and young adult detention facilities, etc.). We are also planning to deconstruct the film into a series of video nuggets that can directly reach an audience via social media (TikTok, IGReels, etc.).2. Educating providers: as we build connections with organizations involved in providing trauma-informed care education, we’re also building a compact 60-90 minute Professional Development offering that includes the film, a discussion and self-study guide, that can be used by organizations to educate their staff. We are also open to opportunities to have Charel present and discuss the film to conference audiences.Budget-permitting, we’ll also be targeting a handful of film festivals as another avenue to raise broader awareness to the societal problem of traumatic childhood experiences.

Current Status - Support Needed!

We have a near final cut that we're sharing with potential collaborators. We are busy developing relationships and planning ways to reach young audiences, and soon we will be working to raise modest finishing funds. The film is currently about 35 minutes long.We are looking for collaborators and partners to help us maximize the impact of this film.

I'm interested

We welcome support

Please let us know if you can help in any way -- as a partner, collaborator, or financial supporter. Or if you're interested in just staying in touch so you can learn where and how to see and use the finished product, that's great too.We will be launching a crowdfunding campaign soon for our finishing funds. (We'll include a link here.)

I'd like to learn more / help

Our Team

Producers: Charel Murrell, Andy Takats
Director: Andy Takats
Cinematographer & Editor: Andy Takats
Story Consultants: Franziska Blome, Michael Sheridan, Rae Trilogy, Malik Williams

Charel is a native of Boston and a mother to two boys. She has extensive experience as a mentor to youth who are victims of or at risk of sex trafficking. She works as the Assistant Director of Prevention & Partnerships at My Life My Choice, a nationally-recognized leader in the battle against the commercial sexual exploitation of children.

Andy grew up in Philadelphia and now lives in Arlington, MA. He spent 10+ years volunteering with traumatized and disadvantaged youth, using photography and film to engage and share their stories. Formerly on the advisory board of the Germaine Lawrence School in Arlington, he is currently a member of the Advisory Board of My Life My Choice.