Excerpts from the article:
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.
“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.
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.
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.
Lauren Abramson…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 [said] “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."
“We’re seeing the effects of children growing up in a world without adults.”