http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/04/10/girl.fights/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
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Eight Florida teenagers -- six of them girls -- will be tried as
adults and could be sentenced to life in prison for their alleged
roles in the videotaped beating of another teen, the state
attorney's office said Thursday.
art.girls.fight.ho.jpg
The sheriff's office relased the video of a 16-year-old being
attacked by other girls.
The suspects, who range in age from 14 to 18, all face charges of
kidnapping, which is a first-degree felony, and battery, said Chip
Thullbery, a spokesman for the Polk County state attorney. Three of
them are also charged with tampering with a witness.
Everyone involved in the case was under a gag order imposed by a
judge. The only attorney for the teens who has been publicly
identified did not return calls from CNN, and his assistant cited
the gag order as the reason. The teens are scheduled for their
first appearance in court Friday.
The video shows a brutal scene: The 16-year-old victim is punched,
kneed and slapped by other girls. She huddles in the fetal
position, or stands and screams at her attackers, but the assault
continues. Authorities say the eight teens said they were
retaliating for insults posted on the Internet by the attack
victim.
Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd called the March 30 attack
"animalistic."
"I've been involved in law enforcement for 35 years, and I've seen
a lot of extremely violent events, but I've never seen children, 14
to 18 years of age, engage in this conduct for a 30-minute period
of time and then make these video clips," he said. Police say the
teens planned to post the video on YouTube. Video Watch the
disturbing video »
The victim, a 16-year-old from Lakeland, Florida, was hospitalized,
and still has blurred vision, hearing loss, and a swollen face, her
mother told CNN on Wednesday.
The video shows only girls doing the beating; Judd said the boys
acted as lookouts.
The idea of girls administering a vicious beating so they can post
the video online may seem shocking, but it's becoming an
increasingly common scenario, according to experts and news
re****ts.
Another example was also in the news this week: A high school art
teacher in Baltimore told police a female student beat her up last
week, and a video of the attack was posted on YouTube, according to
CNN affiliate WBAL.
A search for "girl fight" on YouTube gets thousands of results, and
a suggestion to also try "girl fight at school, boy girl fight" and
other search terms. There's at least one Web site devoted
exclusively to videos of girls fighting.
In 2003, 25 percent of high school girls said they had been in a
physical fight in the past year, according to a survey by the
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The figure for boys
was 40.5 percent.)
A Justice Department re****t released in 2006 showed that by age 17,
21 percent of girls said they had assaulted someone with the intent
to cause serious harm.
Frank Green is executive director of Keys to Safer Schools, a group
that studies and tries to prevent school violence. He said he's not
sure whether girls have actually become more violent, or whether
there's just more awareness of their fights.
"In one respect, girls have always been more vicious than boys,"
Green said. "Their violence is of a personal nature." He said boys
usually have some focus and a concrete goal when they fight. "But
girls want to cause pain and make the other girl feel bad," he
said.
Judd, the Polk County sheriff, said an im****tant part of the plan
in the Lakeland attack was to post the video of the beating on
YouTube to humiliate and embarrass the victim.
"It's the next stage of cyberbullying," psychologist Susan Lipkins
said. "They want to show what they're doing."
"Our kids are being peer pressured, in another sense of a trend, to
put these shock videos out there at other peoples' expense," said
Talisa Lindsay, the victim's mother. "And I hope that it doesn't
come to the point where there's more people's lives that are being
affected by having to take a beating for entertainment, or possibly
being killed." Video Watch mother describe how the victim is doing
»
The suspects didn't have a chance to post the video online before
police moved in and seized it, Judd said. The Sheriff's Department
made it public, and it wound up on YouTube anyway. Judd recognizes
the irony.
"In a perverted sense, we were feeding into exactly what the kids
wanted," he said. "But according to Florida law, [the video] is
public record, and it's going to be in the public domain whether we
agree with that or not."
Judd said the suspects showed no remorse when they were arrested
and booked.
"They were laughing and joking about, 'I guess we won't get to go
to the beach during spring break.' And one ... asked whether she
could go to cheerleading practice," he said.
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Lipkins, the psychologist, says there's a "disconnect between their
actions and their thoughts."
"They think the entire society is doing it, and they think it's
funny. So they put it on YouTube. And I don't think they expect
kids to get really hurt, and they also don't expect to get really
caught."
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