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Tue 27 Apr, 2004 07:02 am
I have posted this article in its entirety, because it comes from an ISP newspage, and i cannot link it to this site:
Violence Among Girls Is Increasing Across America[/b]
Upswing Catches Educators, Law Enforcement Unprepared
By WILEY HALL, AP
BALTIMORE (April 26) - 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. 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.''
04-26-04 1441EDT Copyright 2004 The Associated Press.[/i]
What are your thoughts? Is this just a "phase" through which our society is progressing, or do you feel it is indicative of a new attitude among girls and women about violence?
The growing violence among girls and women is part of the dark underside of the Women's Liberation Movement. Women are refusing to be held back by men...or dissed by other females.
Once upon a time, back in the Golden Days, disruptive students in the Kindergarten through 3rd Grade years were usually little boys. Now that little girls are no longer saddled with the "sugar and spice" stereotypes, almost 50% of the disruptive students are little girls.
As a teenager in the '50's I provoked several nasty "we'll teach you" attacks by female classmates, but they were more scratching, hair-pulling affairs without any intention of inflicting permanent damage.
America is a violent society and both genders are affected.
I hear more and more stories of violent actions amoung girls. Terrifying, but I haven't a clue as to how to stem the tide.
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.''
I find this very interesting. Just where the heck are the adults these days?
That's what "working poor" is all about. That and welfare reform. The poverty isn't going away, but the parents are not even there to take care of their kids.
There was just an article in the NYT about people who were faced with eviction if they didn't volunteer (having been unable to find jobs, even though they were looking); they're poor, no jobs, but if they wanted to keep their apartment they had to pay for childcare for their kids while they did some mandated amount of volunteering.
Child care at that level -- by necessity, the cheapest level -- often sucks.
Argh, it's a mess. (This and your earlier thread about killers, Cav, has brought me back to a time when I dealt with these sorts of situations daily -- can't say I miss it to much, though I guess do in some ways.)
my husband has started a pilot program in his school (anti violence program called "My Choice? No Violence!" yours truly takes credit f/ the name hahahaha) , he teaches 5th grade, and the only girl in the program, is the worst kid in the program he says.
edit: general stuff
It is a mess. Now Canada does have it's problems, and ghettoization (is that a word?) is becoming more frequent. However, we have never been as polarized as the US cities, and don't seem to have their problems as bad, or as frequently. I heard about that awful volunteer for keeping a home thing...it's a terror, and completely misguided. I think I even saw something about a woman who was in that program, and her child was killed while she was commuting miles and miles, just to keep in the program.
It does seem that these problems MUST be fought at the community level. I just caught Onyxelle's post...that sounds great. The people do have immense power, should they choose to speak up.
I've also noticed this along with young girls being quite sexually bold. I think a lot of times when children are violent, the parents are violent as well. When we lived in Mass I saw many parents encourage their kids to fight and I was beside myself, to say the least. There were two boys on our street who use to bully my son and other kids in the neighborhood and I've actually cought their mother hiding behind trees telling her kids to do this. I went to school with this mother and I actually felt sorry for her back then because she was always getting her ass kicked. People use to tell me that if I knew what she was doing I would understand why, so when we were adults with children and I saw her encouraging her kids to abuse people, I finally figured it out. I use to call the cops on these kids all the time and told them that their mother was behind it all, but they could never do anything because it was their word against mine. Then one day I decided to invest in a video camera so I could get the proof I needed to keep these bullies away from my house. In just a few days I taped these kids, then called the cops one last time and I was finally heard. The cops told the mother that if her kids continued this way that they were going to end up in jail. We moved the hell out of there not long after that and it's so nice to live without abuse.
These parents who encourage their kids to be violent should be locked up. They are monsters who are creating more monsters.
This thread reminds me....has anyone seen the movie 'Thirteen"?
Hmmm - girls are becoming more violent here, as well - still nothing like male violence, but a definite trend. Also, I read a study that said that adolescent physical abuse of parents was increasing (we see it from time to time) and that it was the only area of violence in Oz where the perpetrators seemed to be equally boys and girls.
I wonder what's happening with the corollary? Traditionally it has been that girls wound, terribly, with their words, while the boys do with their fists (and then get over it.) I wonder if there is less of the gossip/ manipulation stuff going on with girls now that they're more prone to violence? Whether the boys are doing this more?
Hmm - I think that the fists and then get over it is rather over-rated, if you are speaking of bullying - both physical and emotional abuse tend to have terrible after-effects. I don't think you can say that either is better/worse.
Oh, there wasn't a value judgement there, sloppy wording on my part if there appeared to be. Just that the traditional dichotomy has been words/fists, and I'm wondering if, since one bad thing is wandering over gender lines, the corollary bad thing is too. (Of course, there have always been boys who wound with words and always have been girls who wound with their fists. But everyone seems to be agreeing that general trends used to exist that are now changing.)
I do agree about the get-over-it part; true in some situations, not in others.
Dunno, Soz - speaking from clinical experience, what shocks me is that both the physical and emotional violence seems to be starting earlier, and continuing later, in the schools.
I think 'tis more the same stuff that is leading to increased (public) violence in society in general (not sure that DV and child abuse are really going up or not) that causes this crap - and that kids are forced to stay at school later.
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