Mike on Crime

By James Turner
Winnipeg Free Press

Perhaps the most striking about the aftermath of the brutal assault is how many more people know who she is.

But they’ll never know the girl she once was.

It’s been a month since 16-year-old Adrian was the victim of a savage random gang attack as she and a friend were waiting for a bus after leaving a St. Vital youth drop-in centre the evening of April 24.

As they walked down the street, Adrian and her friend heard the calls from the five teenage girls behind them:

“Eh, whitey! Why you looking at me like that?”

The girls identified themselves to the teens as part of an all-girl aboriginal street gang.

Despite repeated apologies, the gang beat Adrian in broad daylight. She suffered head trauma, deep bruises to her arms and face, and she now has a lazy eye.

A man in his 30s, known to Adrian’s family as ‘St. Christopher,’ intervened and pulled the girls off her. The gang members then tried to damage his car.

Police were called and statements were given, but no arrests have been made. Adrian spent time in the hospital.

The girl’s mother, Angela, said her daughter “looked like she had been run over by a Mack truck five times over.”

The photos Angela took of her daughter’s wounds show a pretty teen marred by the fists and feet of girls engaged in a frenzy of violence.

What they don’t show is how, psychologically, the once easygoing, happy-go-lucky girl will never be the same.

“She’s not that person anymore,” Angela said, sitting at her kitchen table, on which sits a twopage- long list of names and numbers of police, doctors and victim-assistance workers.

Adrian’s mother came forward to speak up about what happened despite her daughter’s wishes to say nothing for fear of reprisals by the gang.

“It wasn’t a beating, it was a malicious, vindictive, purposeful crime,” Angela said.

Angela said she hopes the mothers of the ganginvolved girls take action to intervene in their lives.

“Take a look at your girls — get help for yourself to help your children to make their lives better,” she said.

A 2007 paper on aboriginal women and gangs prepared by the Native Women’s Association of Canada said there are more young aboriginal people living in cities than ever before.

Urban gangs target and recruit youth who are disconnected from their families and often alienated by the school system or child welfare agencies, the paper said.

According to the Edmonton Police Service, there’s an element of feminist rebellion to allgirl gangs that start up in reaction to the sexism and gender inequality found in male-dominated gangs.

They also are sometimes formed as girls become frustrated by a mixed gang’s lack of equal rights when it comes to who risks their lives doing what.

One thing’s for sure: Being in a girl gang is no less violent or ritualistic — girls still must go through the same rites of passage to become a member.

Often, prospects are told by the gang’s leaders to commit a specific crime or submit to being “jumped in” (beaten extensively) before their membership status is confirmed.

Girls in mixed gangs are sometimes “banged in” — forced to have sex with multiple members of the gang simultaneously — to become part of the group.

According to University of Manitoba criminologist Frank Cormier, youth join gangs to fill needs unfulfilled by normal means, such as by their families, who may be caught up in a generational legacy of abuse or poverty.

“If we think of the things we basically get from our family, there’s a lot of young people not getting any of those things… What needs are these gangs filling, and how can we fill them in a better, more responsible way?” he said.

Gangs largely point to the fact that their members are divorced from the social control of a positive future that keeps most people on the straight and narrow.

Cormier said that in his experience, youth in gangs don’t see the North American mainstream dream of houses, cars and education as legitimate for them.

Still, Cormier said, if we were able to look at the “constellation of needs” that each young person has and move to address them in a holistic way, we’d be able to do more for these youth.

“A young person whose needs are met is rarely out stabbing people, stealing cars or burning down houses,” he said.

Regardless of their motivations, Angela said she’s just grateful the girls didn’t kill her daughter.

She said she’s firmly convinced that justice can begin to be served only when all communities are aware that a problem exists and action taken.

“Justice for my daughter is that in the generations to come, things will change and people will begin to respect one another again,” she said.