Attack daughters

It's not just men who commit violence within the home. Massachusetts leads the nation in the reported number of domestic assaults by girls.

Cityscape by Sarah McNaught

"Jamie"^[*] broke curfew. And when she was grounded for it, she broke her mother's jaw.

Jamie looks more like a frightened little girl than a domestic abuser; her slender 5' 6" frame doesn't fit the popular image of a violent perpetrator. Still, the 16-year-old admits that in the heat of anger, she is uncontrollable.

"I don't know what happens to me," she says as she fidgets anxiously in her seat, twirling her long brown hair and feigning disdain. "I lose it. I don't like not being in control."

Unlike many of the young women who are filling up youth detention centers in Massachusetts, Jamie is not the product of a broken home and has not suffered any form of physical or mental abuse. She comes from a suburban middle-class family. She has two sisters and a dog. And until a year and a half ago, she was a good student. But three years ago, Jamie started smoking, and soon after that she began drinking with her friends. "That got old, so we started smoking pot," says Jamie, who is three weeks from appearing in court. "A friend of mine got acid from her brother, and we started tripping. It was cool and it was free."

But Jamie couldn't go home high, so she hung out for a while. All the kids do it, she says. Yet she was the only one of her friends to be punished for being late, and Jamie couldn't accept that. So, out of "frustration," she lashed out. For that, she may spend time locked up.

Jamie is only one of hundreds of girls in this state who have committed violent acts against a family member. In Massachusetts, there are more than 1100 reported cases each year of domestic abuse by adolescents between 11 and 17, and 23 percent of those offenses are committed by girls, according to a study by the Massachusetts Office of the Commissioner of Probation. That's 17 percent higher than the reported number of juvenile female domestic assaults in any other state, according to the FBI. And the Commonwealth has seen a 200 percent increase over the past three years in the number of girls incarcerated for violent behavior. That increase is 52 percent higher than the average for all states, according to the FBI.

Confronted with these disturbing figures, juvenile-justice experts dispute the notion that Massachusetts has an unusual number of adolescent female batterers and other violent girls. Instead, they attribute the statistics to a higher reporting rate for domestic assaults and to a growing willingness to lock girls up. Those who work with troubled girls believe that the incidence of both violence and incarceration points to a deeper concern: existing agencies, hampered by an outdated assumption that violent teens are almost always male, are neglecting the underlying problems that can drive girls to lash out physically.

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Boys do continue to assault family members more often than girls do. According to the Office of the Commissioner of Probation, one-third of all restraining orders taken out against juveniles are for assaults against family members; of those, 64 percent are for assaults by boys against their mothers, 14 percent are for boys against their fathers, and 21 percent are for girls against their mothers. (Among all teen domestic assaults against family members, 77 percent involve parents, 12 percent involve siblings, and 11 percent involve other relatives.)

Daughters, however, are more prone to using weapons in their assaults on family members. According to the state, 23 percent of female juvenile domestic abusers have used a weapon, compared to 15 percent of boys. And more than 41 percent of female offenders whose family members have filed restraining orders against them have a prior record for a violent offense, according to the Commissioner of Probation. Whether they're armed with knives, guns, or baseball bats, girls can be dangerous members of a family.

"Casey" is proof of that, even though she can't stand the sight of blood -- she laughs as she describes how she fainted when her best friend cut her finger trying to open a coconut. But Casey's phobia did not prevent her from slashing her sister's arm with a kitchen knife three years ago. "I was only 14," recalls the high-school junior. "Things just sucked. All my friends had boyfriends. I hated school. And I was dealing with my mother's fourth boyfriend in a year -- a big asshole and a drunk."

Casey was joyriding with friends after school when she saw her younger sister walking down the street wearing Casey's jeans. Casey demanded that her friends stop the car, and she says she snapped: "I was screaming at her to get home, but she took off down the street." Over the next two hours, Casey grew increasingly angry, and by the time she got home, she was "uncontrollable." She says she found her sister sitting in her room talking on the phone. She was no longer wearing Casey's jeans, but that didn't matter.

"I grabbed her by the hair and we started fighting," remembers Casey as she shifts her weight from one blue Skecher to the other. "Next thing I know, we're in the kitchen and she was on the floor. She got up to run and I grabbed a knife and swung it at her." The wound required several stitches, though there was no permanent damage. As for Casey, she was put on probation and sent to anger-management therapy. "It took a long time for my sister to forgive me," she says. "I don't think I'm a violent person. I think I was a product of my environment."

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Many girls who assault family members have had lives more troubled than Casey's, according to Francine Sherman, director of the Juvenile Rights Advocacy Project at Boston College Law School. It is her job to defend girls like Casey and ensure that their underlying problems are dealt with. Violent youths, whether they attack family members, friends, or strangers, often have a history of substance dependency, sexual or physical abuse, or instability at home. "It is a rare case in which a young girl with no history of problems or delinquent behavior suddenly lashes out," says Mary Sylva, spokesperson for the Department of Youth Services (DYS). "There are telltale signs that these young women are becoming violent individuals."

"The girls that we represent have been in the state system since they were very young, whether it be in foster homes, as runaways, or as victims of abuse in the home," explains Sherman. "Right now, 70 percent of girls in the corrections system have special-education needs, which can also cause frustration and, eventually, disruptive behavior."

When any child becomes caught in a cycle of violence, the results can be much more than merely disruptive. "Julie," a 17-year-old in DYS lockdown in Western Massachusetts, began acting out when she was 10. Her father was abusive; her mother used alcohol and, on occasion, drugs to cope with the stress. So Julie began running away. And every time she was brought home, she was beaten a little harder. "I saw the rush he got when he beat me down," says the tall brunette, whose hair is pulled back in a ponytail. "So I wanted some of that power."

Julie started on her little brother and eventually took advantage of her mother's fragile mental state. "Every time he found me and brought me home and beat me, I took it out on her," says Julie. "Then I got kicked out and every time I tried to come home, she got the cops after me."

Eventually, Julie was charged with assault and battery; this time her victim was not her mother but a stranger who "looked at her wrong." Julie herself knows that she should have been stopped a long time ago. "I can't describe the frustration I felt, like I was going to either kill myself or kill her, even though it wasn't her fault," she says of her mother. "Now I just wish I had someone to talk to."

A story like Julie's or Jamie's may sound like Jerry Springer material, but Francine Sherman says that sensationalizing female violence is counterproductive when the state lacks adequate facilities, counseling services, and intervention programs for violent girls. The real focus, she says, should be on learning why girls feel the need to lash out physically.

"Girls are very different from boys in that they are more capable of expressing their feelings, fears, and confusions more openly," Sherman says. "Boys tend to be more physical in their expression, and girls more vocal. So when a girl lashes out in a physically violent manner, particularly at family members, it is a clear signal that there is some communication breakdown in the girl's life that prohibits her from expressing herself any other way."

Sherman says state agencies such as DYS, the Department of Social Services, and the school systems must work together to identify and address these girls' problems, which may need to be treated differently from those afflicting violent boys because the emotional effects of abuse are different for each gender. Some girls need sexual-assault counseling; others may benefit from group therapy to deal with self-esteem issues, which in some cases stem from assault or abuse. "Self-esteem issues are much more prevalent among girls than boys because of the whole body-image stigma the media create," explains Sherman.

Some girls may need treatment for drug and alcohol abuse, too. The number of juvenile female arrests for drug violations nationally has risen from 6708 in 1991 to 19,940 in 1996, according to Margaret Beaudry, director of research for Drug Strategies, a national organization that releases studies on drug trends. "Alcohol is far and away the drug of choice for teen girls, but pot is a close second," Beaudry says. "Although the two are considered depressants and not violent drugs like hallucinogens, they do alter judgment and are often associated with violent behavior."

When girls who've struggled with such problems get in trouble with the law, they're poorly served by a juvenile-justice system designed primarily around young men, says Marianne Turkal, clinical director at the Abraxas Center for Adolescent Females, in Pittsburgh. Because males account for the majority of the country's convicts and delinquents, everything from jails to counseling programs has been aimed at their needs. As the number of girls and women appearing in court has grown, says Turkal, facilities and programs designed for them have not kept pace. Neither have rehabilitation alternatives. Sherman, for example, suggests that some form of communal living arrangement may benefit girls released from state custody who are trying to reintegrate themselves into the community. "Girls, more so than boys, rely on a group support system to deal with issues," she says.

It's negligent for the juvenile system not to acknowledge that girls are very different from boys, says Sherman. She believes that by treating male and female offenders alike, the state is hurting girls' chances of straightening themselves out.

"Ten years ago girls would be considered status offenders for acting out violently, which means they would have received some level of punishment, but not incarceration," explains Sherman. "Now, the courts are treating girls like boys in that they are quicker to lock them up. Call it gender equity. The issue is that girls aren't receiving the rehabilitation they need."

^[*]Names have been changed.

Sarah McNaught can be reached at smcnaught[a]phx.com.