[lit-ideas] Violence Among Girls
- From: "Andreas Ramos" <andreas@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: "Lit-Ideas" <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2004 09:50:20 -0700
Violence Among Girls Increasing in U.S.
Mon Apr 26, By WILEY HALL, Associated Press Writer
BALTIMORE - Twelve-year-old Nicole Townes is out of a coma but still
struggling to recover after being pummeled and stomped at a birthday party
in a beating that was shocking not just because of its savagery, but because
it was meted out by other girls.
Authorities say it is symptomatic of a disturbing trend around the country:
Girls are turning to violence more often and with terrifying intensity.
"We're seeing girls doing things now that we used to put off on boys,"
former Baltimore school Police Chief Jansen Robinson said. "This is vicious,
`I-want-to-hurt-you' fighting. It's a nationwide phenomenon and it's
catching us all off guard."
Police and prosecutors said Nicole's beating Feb. 28 began when a boy at the
party, acting on a dare, kissed the girl on the cheek. The other children
exploded with "eeeewws" and laughter, according to the police report.
The 36-year-old mother of the birthday girl apparently was offended, because
the boy was supposed to be her daughter's boyfriend. So the mother allegedly
urged her daughter to "handle your business," an order police said meant the
girl was supposed to defend the family's honor.
Nicole was scratched, pummeled, kicked and stomped by as many as six women
and girls, police said. She was in a coma for nearly three weeks and is
still hospitalized. Her family said she may have permanent brain damage.
Charged in the assault were the birthday girl, 13; her mother; her
19-year-old sister; and three other girls, ages 13, 14 and 15. Police also
charged a 24-year-old woman who lived with Nicole with child abuse and
neglect for leaving the girl at the party.
"We're just stunned and disgusted and we still can't understand how such a
thing could have happened," said the family's pastor, the Rev. Durrell
Williams of the Full Gospel Deliverance Church. Williams described Nicole as
a timid girl, "not one of your fighters."
Around the country, school police and teachers are seeing a growing tendency
for girls to settle disputes with their fists. They are finding themselves
breaking up playground fights in which girls are going at each other
toe-to-toe, like boys.
Nationally, violence among teenage boys - as measured by arrest statistics
and surveys - outstrips violence among teenage girls 4 to 1, according to
the Justice Department (news - web sites). But a generation ago, it was 10
to 1. Schools report a similar pattern in the number of girls suspended or
expelled for fighting.
Experts say the trend simply reflects society - girls are more violent
because society in general is more violent and less civil. Some say that the
same breakdowns in family, church, community and school that have long been
blamed for violence among boys are finally catching up to girls.
And some believe the violence is also fueled by the emergence of movies and
video games such as "Tomb Raider" in which women wreak violence with the
gusto of male action heroes.
The assault on Nicole illustrates how some parents are almost as immature as
their children, said Rosetta Stith, principal of a Baltimore public school
for teen mothers.
"You keep hearing that phrase, `Handle your business,' `Handle your
business,'" Stith said. "Now I ask you - What business could a 13-year-old
possibly have? But for a lot of girls, it's all about respect, defending
your turf, fighting for your man."
Last May, girls were videotaped beating and kicking other girls during a
hazing at well-to-do Glenbrook High School in suburban Chicago. And fighting
among girl gangs in cities such as Los Angeles and Chicago has educators and
community workers scrambling for solutions.
"It's a high-priority topic that resonates with any school, any principal
today," said Bill Bond, who heads a project on school safety for the
National Association of Secondary School Principals. "I've been to 17
association meetings this year and the topic has been addressed at every
meeting."
Lauren Abramson, director of the Community Conferencing Center, a Baltimore
agency that resolves disputes through mediation, said one difference between
boys and girls is that gossip is more likely to be at the bottom of a
dispute between girls.
"Gossip as a source of violence is understudied and little understood,"
Abramson said. "But time and again, when we bring the parties together, get
them to talk and dig into what started it all, it invariably comes back to
something somebody heard somebody else said."
Phil Leaf, director of the Center for the Prevention of Youth Violence at
Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said society should not have been
caught by surprise by the surge in girl violence.
"In retrospect, we can see girls falling prey to the same influences as
boys," Leaf said. "A decade or so ago, we were worried about the lack of
male role models in the home. Today, there is a dearth of effective female
role models as the mothers who used to be there are forced back into the job
market or get rendered ineffective through abuse of drugs and alcohol."
Leaf said the situation in Baltimore and other cities reminds him of the
William Golding novel "Lord of the Flies": "We're seeing the effects of
children growing up in a world without adults."
------------------------------------------------------------------
To change your Lit-Ideas settings (subscribe/unsub, vacation on/off,
digest on/off), visit www.andreas.com/faq-lit-ideas.html
Other related posts:
- » [lit-ideas] Violence Among Girls
