Her 3-inch-thick court file reveals a dark and violent world the teen is navigating: multiple arrests and stays in the juvenile detention center, repeated violations while free on electronic monitoring.
The girl was sexually abused. She has experienced violence in her own relationships, suffers from mental illness, has attempted suicide and is a chronic runaway. She has suffered graze wounds in shootings and seen a family member shot.
She is 15 years old.
“I could be dead,” she said, according to reports from Cook County Juvenile Court.
This year’s surge in homicides to levels unseen in two decades shines a light on the risks so many boys and young men face each day in Chicago’s toughest neighborhoods. But far less often told or understood are the stories of girls and young women who witness the violence up close or end up in the middle of the conflict themselves.
They must walk to school through gang battles. They have lost boyfriends and brothers to gunfire. They’ve seen countless shootings.
Their roles, though, are not always just as passive bystanders. They carry guns for gangs and sometimes assume leadership roles. They slug their way through fistfights, fearing that backing down will be a sign of weakness. They are “tatted” up to show allegiance.
With the proportion of girls in the juvenile justice system increasing, advocates and law enforcement have reconsidered how to intervene early with girls and get them the help so many desperately need. Experts welcome the overdue attention but also wonder if it is enough.
So, too, do some of the girls growing up amid all the daily drama and stress.
“You see a lot of stuff in my neighborhood. People argue every single day. I have been through it all,” said a Humboldt Park teenage girl who recently was enrolled in a mentoring program for young women. “I think girls need attention. They need to feel they are important, that they are worth something.”
Silent victims
Girls and young women are far more often the victims of violence than the perpetrators. Through about the first eight months of 2016, 850 girls aged 17 and under were victims of an array of violent crimes, including homicides, aggravated batteries and robberies, according to Chicago police records.
Dozens of girls in the same age category – 117 in all – were arrested for their roles in violent crimes, the statistics show.
With violence at its worst levels since the late 1990s, shootings have soared by some 50 percent to more than 4,100 victims as of last week. About 435 of them were female, 10.6 percent of the total.
But even those stark figures don’t begin to accurately reflect the extent of the danger that girls in Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhoods face every day, experts say. Girls are exposed to violence on the street and – all too often – at home. They also face sexual harassment and abuse.
Some girls involved in gangs become so enamored with that life that their feelings for their own families can suffer, say those who work with the girls.
The long-term emotional impact can be severe for girls who have been exposed to violence either as victims or witnesses. They suffer from higher rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression, anxiety and substance use, according to “Gender Injustice,” a 2015 study by the National Women’s Law Center.
“Girls in the justice system have experienced abuse, violence, adversity and deprivation,” the center’s report said. “What is missing is a focus on how systems – particularly juvenile justice systems – can be redesigned to protect public safety and support the healing and healthy development of girls and young women.”
The ways that boys and girls handle trauma can be different, experts say. Girls run away more often and are more anxious. They internalize the stress, which can lead to cutting, experts said.
“The violence is really affecting them internally. A young lady is feeling numb. A young lady has some social anxiety. They snap off real quick,” said Gail Day, program manager for Working on Womanhood, a school-based youth guidance program launched in 2011 in Chicago. “We are talking about those silent victims of trauma that no one hears.”
Two teen girls whom the Tribune is not identifying because of close family members’ involvement in gangs spoke recently about how it feels to be a female in tough Chicago neighborhoods.
One has had recurring nightmares about her boyfriend getting shot. Both have limited the time they are seen with gang-involved family members out of concern for their own safety. Occasionally, the school day ends with warnings from friends, also gang members, that there has been a fight and to be careful. Girls they know date gang members or are in gangs themselves.
“Everywhere you go you have to watch where you’re going because you never know,” one said. “ There’s a lot of young girls my age getting shot or killed because of violence. So I just think that could have been me. That’s what I worry about.”
“Bullets don’t have no names,” the other said.
Both neighborhood organizations and the juvenile justice system are still trying to provide adequate services to girls – despite years of focusing on the differences in how girls and boys respond to violence.
More emphasis is being placed on figuring out how to help girls not only cope with the trauma but also to find inspiration to look beyond the troubled streets they are on every day – and to see themselves as worthy of saving.
Source: Chicago Tribune | Annie Sweeney