The rage among girls

It's likely to start over a boy. There may be a lot of he-said, she-said conversations, perhaps followed by some intense, overnight instant-messaging from home computers.

And then, at school the next morning, an emotional and physical frenzy.

Physical fighting was once an issue almost completely limited to boys. But over the past decade, educators and law enforcement officials have seen an alarming increase in the number of girls turning to violence as a solution.

"I don't know if it's that Jerry Springer mentality that conflict is entertaining or what. I really don't have a scientific reason, but I wish I did," said Mark Ruark, assistant principal at Central High School in Cape Girardeau.

In his 11 years at Central, Ruark said altercations between girls have gone from rare to making up an estimated 80 percent of all verbal and physical fights at the school last year. At the same time, the number of altercations between boys has not increased.

Ruark said the trend became especially noticeable in the last three or four years because teens have more ways to engage each other that aren't face to face.

"It's easier to send a hate e-mail than to pick up the phone and say those things in person," Ruark said. "And with the majority of fights, there's a male involved."

Some experts blame the change on violent television and video games. Others say the breakdown in family, church and school that has been attributed to violence among boys is now catching up to girls. Still others say adolescent violence is connected to children's early learning environments within their families.

According to the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the number of female juveniles arrested for aggravated assault increased by 24 percent between 1992 and 2001. Arrests for simple assault for girls rose by 66 percent over the same years.

The report said arrests for male juveniles for aggravated assault dropped by 21 percent while simple assaults grew by 18 percent.

And while U.S. Department of Justice totals show that violence among teenage boys still surpasses violence among girls by a ratio of 4-to-1, a generation ago that figure was 10-to-1.

In Cape Girardeau and Bollinger counties, 38 percent of all juvenile assault charges filed with police in 2003 were against girls. So far this year, 39 percent of assault charges have been against girls. Data from Perry County, also part of the state's 32nd Judicial District, was not available.

But juvenile officer Randy Rhodes said even those statistics may not truly reflect the increase in violence among girls.

"The police's discretion tends to be to undercharge females," said Rhodes, the chief juvenile officer for the state in Cape Girardeau, Bollinger and Perry counties. "They could come in with their faces bleeding and get charged with peace disturbance instead of assault."

Rhodes said he hasn't calculated the numbers, but suspects that if peace disturbance and assault charges were added together, the percentage of boys charged and girls charged would be about equal.

"The research on female violence is disturbing," Rhodes said. "With females, the negative consequences of violence don't cross their minds."

Phil Leaf, director of the Center for Prevention of Youth Violence at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, said society should not be surprised by the increase in violence among girls.

"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 mothers who used to be there are forced back into the job market or get rendered ineffective through abuse of drugs and alcohol."

The violence shouldn't be stereotyped, Rhodes said.

"It's not just black girls on the south side of town," Rhodes said. "It's not isolated to any group."

And it starts early. Even with seventh- and eighth-graders at Central Junior High School, principal Lee Gattis said he has noticed more fighting among girls. Though there have not been any fights since the start of the current school year, Gattis said both girls and boys have been quicker to resort to violence in recent years.

"I don't know if that has to do with television or societal changes, but you can definitely tell a difference," Gattis said.

Most of the fights between junior high girls break out over boys or gossip, Gattis said, just like at the high school level. One method of prevention is the school's girl club, which acts as a peer group.

Unfortunately, tactics such as that and mediation do not seem to be as effective at the high school level, Ruark said.

At Central, Ruark said the best way to prevent fights is supervision, the presence of teachers and administrators especially at times of the day and in areas of the school where fights are more likely to break out.

Also, if two students are known to have a conflict, school officials will make sure they avoid contact with each other. There are no security cameras at the high school, though Ruark said they would greatly help prevent fights.

"Security cameras were in the original building plans, but were among those things that got cut because of budget constraints," Ruark said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

cclark@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 128