The Lost Boys were victims of a brutal civil war in the south of Sudan that began more than two decades ago. The Arizona center's current outreach coordinator, Jany Deng, 26, landed in Phoenix in 1995; he and his blood brother Simon were two of the first four Lost Boys to arrive in Arizona. Their saga had begun 10 years before.

While herding cattle in 1985, Jany and other boys from his village witnessed the destruction of their homes by government-backed Islamic militias. They took off running, beginning a multiyear exodus that spanned East Africa and countries around the globe. Many of their parents were murdered and their sisters raped, enslaved and killed. (As a result, there are fewer Lost Girls.)

For years, tens of thousands of Lost Boys walked more than 1,000 miles across East Africa, thousands dying of starvation, disease, and militia and animal attacks. Jany and his group first went east to Ethiopia, where Jany was reunited with Simon, who had made it there with another group of Lost Boys. But when civil war flared up in 1990, they fled back to Sudan. They returned to nothing: Their family and village were gone. Eventually they trekked to Kenya, winding up in the Dadaab refugee camp. After a year in Dadaab, they were among the first few relocated to the United States.

In the 2003 documentary film "Lost Boys of Sudan," one Lost Boy expresses the shared perception, while in the Kakuma refugee camp, of what it will be like to leave for America: "This journey is like you are going to heaven."

When Jany and Simon arrived in Arizona, Jany, then age 16, was sent to live with a foster family; Simon, 23, shared an apartment with two older boys. It was a pattern that continued from coast to coast as more of them came; the minors were resettled with families, while older Lost Boys were placed in dingy apartments, often cramped together, in rough city neighborhoods or on the outskirts of towns.

In Phoenix, Jany attended school, made friends and joined the track team; Simon couldn't keep a job. He told Jany that "people looked at him different and made comments." By the spring of 1997, Simon had grown despondent. He wanted to bring his girlfriend from Dadaab to Arizona, but to no avail. He had no money or job prospects. According to Jany, Simon began to speak of suicide.

On Apr. 10, 1997, Simon bought a 9MM rifle and rode a city bus toward the Catholic Social Services office building in North Phoenix. He got off the bus, took the rifle out of its box and fired it in the parking lot of a Circle K convenience store before heading to the office. A police helicopter and officers responded as Simon entered Catholic Social Services at lunchtime. Once inside, Simon looked for his caseworkers and, according to the police report, began firing his gun in the air. No one was hurt. The police arrived at the building and Simon shot at Officer Terrence Kobza. Kobza returned fire and killed Simon with a bullet in the arm and another in the chest.

Today, Jany still hasn't made peace with Simon's death. "Why here?" he asks. "He could have died over there. I could have died over there," he says of Africa, his words breaking into a stutter. "The way it happened, it was not a good way."

Local news and police reports from the past eight years, along with accounts from advocates and Lost Boys themselves, reveal a trail of tragic events.

In August 2001 in Boston, Daniel Majok Kachuol, 19, was charged with assault and rape, just six months after his arrival. In September 2002 in Rochester, Minn., Christofar Atak, 31, ran in front of a police car in the street, shouting, "I want to die!" Under disputed circumstances, a police officer ended up shooting Atak point-blank in the back. Atak, who survived, had a blood-alcohol level that indicated he was severely intoxicated. That same month, Phillip Ajack Cham, 33, entered an immigration office in Houston demanding to be repatriated to Sudan; he grabbed a gun from a guard, firing it and threatening suicide before being subdued by officers.

In April 2004 in Fargo, N.D., Chol Deng Chol, 25 -- considered "one of the most promising students we've seen in a long time" by a mentor at North Dakota State University -- was charged with the rapes of two teenage girls after a night of drinking. In Atlanta that summer, Ajuong Manuer, 21, died following an alcohol-fueled fight -- over $10 -- with fellow Lost Boy Mayen Biar Diing, 25. And in May 2005 in Seattle, Kero Riiny Giir, 27, stabbed to death an ex-girlfriend, Lost Girl Roda Bec, 16, for being "rude" to him, as he would later tell police. After fleeing the scene, Giir had jumped off a highway overpass in an apparent suicide attempt.

"We have a lot of angry Lost Boys, and it has not been brought to the attention of the community," says John Aza, 40, director of the Southern Sudanese Resettlement Program in Tucson. Aza left Sudan in 1996 and is currently earning a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering from the University of Arizona. He does not count himself among the Lost Boys, though he is close with the community. At the end of July, Aza visited six Lost Boys who had been released from jail -- some arrested for driving while intoxicated, two for arguing with police officers after a fight in a club. For Lost Boys who lack jobs and community support, and who have a hard time adapting to American culture, says Aza, alcohol is often "the nearest comfort."

"A lot of Lost Boys have been picked up for DUIs," Wheat says. "It appears to be a growing problem in the Sudanese community, but it's something that's kept a dark secret. They don't deal with it. We could start an AA meeting at the center and nobody would come."

Advocates across the country, including from large enclaves in Atlanta and Jacksonville, Fla., express serious concerns about publicizing the Lost Boys' problems. They say the refugee community is extremely sensitive about them, while some fear a backlash could undermine fundraising, scholarships and the ability to enlist volunteers and mentors. Wheat also worries that news of dark-skinned refugees falling into violent crime won't be well received, especially in America's post-Sept. 11 political climate.

But shining a light on the troubling cases could be critical to helping the refugees, says Apuk Ayuel, who serves as deputy spokeswoman for the newly established Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan, a nonprofit support group based in Los Angeles. Ayuel, 24, fled Sudan with her mother and arrived in Houston in 1996. She currently studies political science at the University of Texas at Arlington. "It seems like the way it's depicted is that every single Lost Boy has gone through -- that their situation is all equal, that all of them are getting educations," she says. "But there are a lot of people who are falling through the cracks. Their deeper stories are not being told."

Some of those stories involve dozens of Lost Boys who have been victimized themselves. Violent crime -- often in racially charged circumstances -- including assault, robbery and murder, has led to the deaths of at least four Lost Boys. They have also been involved in a rash of car accidents. Many Lost Boys saw their first cars just a few years ago and so have little driving experience; according to Wheat, more than two dozen had serious accidents in Arizona alone in 2004, including two fatalities.

Wheat says she knows of at least a dozen around the country who've attempted suicide.

While the details of various tragic cases remain murky, researchers see at least one clear thread tying them all together: trauma-related mental illness, mostly left untreated. David Berceli is a trauma therapist and founder of Trauma Recovery Assessment and Prevention Services who worked in Sudan between 2001 and 2004. Berceli, who counseled a group at the Arizona Lost Boys Center in July on post-traumatic stress disorder, says he's troubled, but not surprised by the pattern of incidents. "With people who have been put through years of life-and-death experiences, untreated fear and anger can develop into hatred and rage," he says. "It becomes an uncontrollable energy."

In June, Dr. Paul Geltman, a professor of pediatrics at the Boston University School of Medicine, published a study measuring the assimilation and well-being of 304 Lost Boys who arrived as minors in the U.S. from late 2000 to early 2001. While many fared relatively well, the study concludes that 20 percent of them suffer from PTSD.

Geltman says the rate of PTSD does not necessarily go beyond "what would be expected" of a traumatized refugee population. At the same time, he adds, he finds it remarkable that the prevalence of PTSD isn't higher. "I'd love the opportunity to do a large assessment of the older Lost Boys for comparison," he says. He notes that the problems of the older Lost Boys are probably "much greater" and would amount to greater levels of dysfunction, considering they've received less attention and support, and fewer services, than the minors. But even the minors, Geltman says, have not necessarily received the mental health help they've needed. As a result, his report concludes, the Lost Boys face lasting difficulties in being integrated into U.S. society.

Advocates, including Sudanese who have become leaders among the refugee community, share that view. According to Ayuel, many of the Lost Boys still suffer nightmares about the horrors they witnessed and endured. "They're normal most of the time, but they'll have the same nightmares over and over," she says. "There are some people in the community of Lost Boys and Girls who will say, 'Yeah, they're a little crazy.'" Ayuel says therapy is a concept as foreign to the Sudanese natives as refrigerators and fast-food restaurants once were. In fact, therapy is taboo to them.

Recent Stories