Fighting for Girls: New Perspectives on Gender and Violence

EIGHT: NEGOTIATIONS OF THE LIVING SPACE: Life in the Group Home for Girls Who Use Violence

175 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 175 EIGHT NEGOTIATIONS OF THE LIVING SPACE Life in the Group Home for Girls Who Use Violence Marion Brown SETTING THE CONTEXT Ruth was 17 years old when she moved into the group home where I was working. She had experienced horrendous abuse and violence in her family home, woken in the mornings by her stepfather’s hands around her throat. She was running away from home, struggling in school, and feeling desperate. I was certain that she was better off living at the group home; I was sure we could provide a safe and comforting space to live, support her in school, and work with her on the layers of hurt in her life. Six months later, the previously drug-free Ruth was coming home stoned each day. She was arrested for shoplifting on her eighteenth birthday. When she was suspended from school after several incidents of beating up other girls, my unease reached its peak. Not enough that I struggled with the tension of the care and control aspects of my role, I now struggled with the increasing experience that the very setting that had promised to heal from the past had paved an equally troubling future. Working in group homes, I have met many young women like Ruth, and have had many anxious discussions with colleagues about how to balance 176 FIGHTING FOR GIRLS the potential harms of the residential context with the potential helps that it could provide, conversations that continue today. This chapter is based on research with girls who live in groups homes and their use of violence, an interest spurred on by the nagging concern that the group home’s structural need for compliance, in combination with early experiences of violent subcultures and the societal culture of compulsory heterosexuality and hegemonic femininity, might perpetuate a climate within which girls engage in violent behavior as a means of experiencing personal power. I wondered if the group home might be a site for the evidence of these tensions and I wanted to learn from the girls about how they make sense of their lives. INTRODUCTION Over the past ten years, media attention in Canada has constructed an interest in and focus on sensational events involving girls’ engagement with violent behaviors, from harassment and bullying, to assault and murder, contributing to a sense of moral panic on the part of the public. The formal code for responses to criminal charges in Canada, the Youth Criminal Justice Act, mandates a move toward community-based placements and programs rather than incarceration for crimes by both male and female youth (Department of Justice, Canada, 2002). This chapter draws on research with girls who live in group homes because of their use of violence, seeking to understand how the girls make sense of the rules, the roles, and the requirements of a range of socially controlled settings. The historical origins of residential care settings are reviewed before contextualizing violence in the early lives of the girls. Listening to the stories of the girls led to the development of a conceptual framework for understanding the dynamics of context and behavior, drawing on Foucault’s work on discipline and punishment (1979). RESIDENTIAL SETTINGS: PURPOSES AND PROGRAMMING Children’s residential facilities began to be developed in industrial times, when children moved from rural to urban settings for work and therefore became more visible to the public eye. Increased mobility and opportunities for labor led to the separation of many children from their parents, a situation considered to have weakened parental oversight and authority (Rutman, 1987). In Canada, private charity merged with governmental responsibility to establish a range of services for children’s welfare, leading to the passage of the Industrial Schools Act of 1874 (Rutman, 1987). This Act encouraged the opening of residential, custodial, and educational settings for youth under the age of 14 who were considered “out of control” or without appropriate parental supervision. Although the Canadian literature is silent on the history of placing girls in surrogate care sites, examples of correctional and training facilities 177 NEGOTIATIONS OF THE LIVING SPACE in the United States are instructive. For example, in the United States, the response to girls’ behavior through the juvenile court system and training schools has historically been associated with anticipated precocious sexual expression (Abrams & Curran, 2000). Training schools and reformatories sought to realign girls with traditional prescriptions for femininity, believing complete immersion was required. The...