Sat, Mar 22, 2008 The Straits Times
Some girls here are getting wilder and getting into trouble with the law. They are getting arrested for causing serious hurt and rioting. They also join gangs and experiment with sex at a younger age, some as young as 10. Joan Chew, Chia Mei Liang, He Xingying and Ong Dai Lin report on young girls running wild.
JANE joined a gang at 13 after getting to know its members through her friends. She skipped school to smoke, drink, play cards and steal bicycles at void decks.At first, she was just looking for a bit of fun. But soon, she was sniffing glue at HDB staircases, selling illegal cigarettes at the housing estate opposite her school and picking fights with other gangs.
During one of these fights, the police showed up. By 14, she was placed in a girls' shelter after her father declared her Beyond Parental Control.
Other girls like Jane are getting into all kinds of trouble with the law.
Last year, 46 girls - aged seven to 19 - were arrested for causing serious hurt and rioting. Another 766 were picked up for theft.
Overall, the number of girls arrested over the past three years for causing serious hurt and rioting has come down, according to police.
But more parents are giving up on delinquent daughters than sons, and seeking help at the Juvenile Court. In the last two years, more Beyond Parental Control complaints were filed against girls than boys.
In 2006, 86 girls were hauled to court by their parents and declared out of control, compared to 61 boys. The figure for girls was 70 the year before.
Children declared Beyond Parental Control are those below 16 who misbehave to such an extent that their parents feel they can no longer control them and need the court's assistance to manage them.
More girls are also experimenting with sex, some as young as 10. In 2006, teenagers accounted for 12 per cent of about 12,000 abortions performed in Singapore. Of these, 19 were carried out on girls below 15, according to the Health Ministry.
More girls between the ages of 10 to 19 are also contracting sexually transmitted infections. In 2006, more than 500 of such cases were diagnosed at the Department of Sexually Transmitted Infections Control Clinic - a three- fold increase from five years ago.
Self-mutilation is another emerging spectre. Although there are no statistics available, counsellors and social workers say girls are more likely to cut or bruise themselves than boys.
The danger is that when they are not taught other coping methods, the cuts get progressively deeper, till they land in hospital.
Cyber bullying
ANOTHER worrying trend is cyber bullying among girls, abetted by the Internet and mobile phones today.
Many hide behind computer screens to bully their victims, instead of confronting them in person. On blogs, they abuse their victims using expletives, deface their pictures and spread vicious rumours about them.
Since polytechnic student Esther Chia, 18, set up a blog documenting her daily life last May, she has seen mocking photographs of a boy imitating her 'doe-eyed innocent look'. Others have left jeers like 'you are ugly' and 'you suck' on her blog.
'When I have had a hard day, seeing such comments when I get home makes me feel worse,' says the teen who receives about 3,000 hits on her blog daily and is now hardened to the routine abuse.
According to Ms Esther Ng, who founded Coalition Against Bullying for Children and Youths in 2005 to stamp out such behaviour, female cyber bullies choose to assault others online because they can stay comfortably anonymous.
'The Internet is one of the simplest tools to use. It is easily available and the bully doesn't have to face the victim. It also spreads faster and the bullies think they will not get caught,' she adds.
Increasingly too, girls are using their cellphones to record acts of bullying and aggression. They then post the video clips on free video-sharing websites like YouTube to humiliate their victims.
For extra bragging rights, they also circulate the clips among their friends using Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) or Bluetooth technology.
A widely circulated and disturbing four-minute video posted online was brought up in Parliament in January by Jalan Besar GRC MP Lily Neo. It showed four girls laughing gleefully as they punched, slapped and stripped their 13-year-old victim at an HDB staircase landing. They stopped only when onlookers gathered.
The victim hung her head in shame throughout. But like many other bullying clips posted online, it spread like wildfire. Ms Ng observes: 'There are schools where almost everybody has seen the video.'
Hard candy
THE Internet is also used by girls to hunt down men willing to pay - in cash or branded goods - for sex.
Popular advertisement websites such as SgAdsOnline and Craigslist Singapore carry advertisements of teenage girls offering one-night stands for fast cash.
Others use sexy blogs as a tool to hunt down Sugar Daddies willing to pay for a 'relationship'.
One 17-year-old, who calls herself a 'teenage Lolita', documented her sexual experiences and said she is looking for a man who can give her $500 per meeting.
She wrote that she is 'not poor' but 'hankers after the better things in life'.
'I'm not selling my body. I call it a mutually beneficial relationship,' she declared in one entry.
Others post photographs of themselves in skimpy outfits on social networking websites like Friendster and Facebook.
Teen blogger Celeste Chen thrusts her hips suggestively in a midriff-baring blouse in one MTV-style video posted on her blog. The 17-year-old schoolgirl's Friendster profile features a wallpaper of her in a backless top, matched with black hot pants and high heels. She declined to be interviewed for this report.
Why are girls behaving so badly?
Counsellors say dysfunctional media influences like pop star Britney Spears, rising materialism and weakening family bonds are possible factors.
Many girls feel pressured to look good and dress well. When they do not have the money to buy what they want, they resort to begging, borrowing, stealing or selling sex.
Most start out by shoplifting items like accessories, clothes, bags and cosmetics, notes Ms Eileen Chua, assistant director of Lakeside Family Centre, which has seen more delinquent girls over the years.
Sandy, 15, says she took to peddling illegal cigarettes at the void deck to supplement her $5 daily allowance. She made about $150 a day.
'I used to steal money from my father but my friend told me not to do it. She introduced me to selling cigarettes instead,' says the Secondary 3 dropout.
But the money ran out soon after she ran away from home.
Bad girls, good homes
IT USED to be that bad girls who stole, fought and joined gangs mostly came from broken families. Not any more, say counsellors.
In recent years, many who face court orders or get caught by the police come from intact homes, says Dr Carol Balhetchet, director of youth services at the Singapore Children's Society.
In 2006, 69 per cent of new probation cases involved delinquent youth who come from two-parent nuclear families, according to the Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS).
'Teenagers today have the attitude that no one can discipline them or make them do what they don't want to do,' says social worker Ms Chua.
Indeed, Mr Mohamed Juffri openly admits he has lost control of his eldest daughter, who just turned 14. She tells lies and stays away from home for days at a stretch. 'I'm worried that she may be hanging out with gangs.
I don't know who her friends are,' he says.
Last month, the 40-year-old security officer and his sales promoter wife hardened their hearts and filed a Beyond Parental Control court order against her.
'This is our last resort. We do not want her to waste her life away,' he says sadly. In between all the 12-hour shifts he worked, she became a stranger.
Sister Maria Sylvia Ng, formerly in charge of Poverello Teen Centre, a drop-in centre for delinquent youth, warns: 'If parents do not inculcate values in their children when they are young, there is no holding them back when they reach adolescence.'
Farhana, 14, knows her mother loses sleep whenever she hangs out with friends at West Coast Park past 11 pm. But she shrugs it off.
She used to see very little of her mother, who worked long hours as a restaurant helper. The Secondary 2 student rationalises: 'When I wanted to talk to her, she was always not there.'
Her mother has quit her job to spend more time with her, but it is too little, too late for Farhana. She rants: 'I don't understand my mother. I tell her who I'm with but she's still worried. When I come home late, she calls the police. We often quarrel about this.'
Dr Balhetchet says teens like Farhana often make it difficult for parents to talk to them. In their desire to grow up fast and be independent, they send out messages to their parents to 'leave them alone'.
But what they really hanker after - at any age - is time and attention. So most neglected youth misbehave to get their parents to notice them, notes counsellor Stella Tan from Yong-En Care Centre.
'They know that their parents will have to spend more time with them in order to scold them,' she says.
She stresses the importance of parents being there for their children.
'When they are young, they may bore you with minor details about school. But if you shut them off, they grow up thinking that you do not have time for them.
'Eventually when you start to get interested in what they do, they will say they have no time to talk to you.'
