Violence Among Girls Increasing in U.S.

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Violence Among Girls Increasing in U.S.

By WILEY HALL Associated Press Writer

 

BALTIMORE (AP) - 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."