Girls in Trouble with the Law

Chapter 2: Injury, Gender, and Trouble

57 2 Injury, Gender, and Trouble Mylen Cruz was Filipina American, sixteen years old, and in detention for stabbing a boy at her school. “I was in the office at my school, and this boy come up to me jus’ to fuck with me. He was all, ‘I’ma get me some of this shit, man.’ He touched my butt! He thought we gonna be kickin’ it or some shit! We got into a violent fight. I did a violent act. I don’t know. I was mad. I couldn’t deal with my anger; I couldn’t hold it. I’m not a killer, but I would be able to do it. I hoped he wouldn’t die, but I didn’t want to go home. I wasn’t scared to come to Juvey.” What did Mylen mean by “but I didn’t want to go home”? It turned out that she was under brutal attack in her own house. In her file, I read that her mother was often homeless with Mylen and her little brother. Mylen continued: “My mom is there for me sometimes. She’s always busy ’cause she has a lot of problems: the rent, money. We used to be close, but her stress affects me. I never ran away, but we always got evicted.” One time her family was staying with another family, and her mother “had to serve the other family’s father coffee and take a lot of shit, like she was the slave! I watched him treat her like shit!” Mylen was deeply affected by watching her mother be demeaned. She mentioned it in the interview and again when I went with her and her mother to an Ala-Teen meeting the following week. Mylen became very upset during that first conversation and started crying. She said she felt that so many things were wrong with her life she couldn’t figure out how to begin to fix it. “One of my mom’s boyfriends molested me. It was the grossest thing in the world. Everybody knew and nobody would help. When I was twelve years old, I started hanging out with [a] guy from by my street, and he used to hit me all the 58 Girls in Trouble with the Law time. He made me do gross shit to him, and then he even hit me!” Mylen also said she hated school and knew she shouldn’t have gone the day she stabbed the boy. “I knew I was gonna go off on somebody.” Mylen’s narrative was representative of the stories of most of the young women I met who were in detention facilities charged with violent offenses. They were simultaneously victims and perpetrators, and it was hard to know whether to console them or punish them. My contention in this chapter is that in court the biographies of Mylen and girls like her should play a significant role in determining their best interests —not as an excuse for physical assault, but as an aid to the court. The abuse that Mylen endured was sustained, chronic, and acute. The experience of abuse is gendered. For boys, abuse goes against what they are taught to expect from their position of superiority. Abuse of girls confirms their place in a gendered hierarchy. A distinct process needs to be enacted in order for girls to heal and to regain or achieve a sense of safety and psychological integrity. Thus, gender deeply affects how childhood abuse is processed and how recovery occurs. This chapter argues several related points. Sexual violence is fundamentally gendered and racialized; it is experienced differently by girls than by boys, and among girls. Abuse plays a special role in the lives of many girls who come to the attention of authorities. This role must be theorized because its meaning cannot be determined empirically. Finally, the definitions of community and youth violence must be broadened in order to begin to capture the prevalence and significance of sexual violence in girls’ lives. Violence Against Girls Provokes Girls’ Violence: Reconfiguring “Abuse” Growing up female today includes sorting out and facing delicate sexual dilemmas. Pubescent and adolescent girls must learn to navigate the world of being feminine and attractive without getting raped. Girls constitute the majority of children who are traumatized in childhood both sexually and physically. Psychologists note that emotional responses to sexualized trauma unconsciously guide behavior. Girls in detention spoke of how, at home, their mothers’ boyfriends, their fathers , and...