Word: grouped
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...comprehend, but it is true. Some atrocious crimes in America are being committed by those who should be the most innocent -- the young. Recent weeks have brought news of two particularly brutal acts: the gang rape and near murder of a jogger in Manhattan's Central Park by a group of youths 14 to 16, and the alleged sexual assault on a mentally impaired girl by high school students in affluent Glen Ridge, N.J. These crimes have awakened the country to the beast that has broken loose in some of America's young people...
...offenders are overwhelmingly male, but girls too are capable of vicious crimes. In Escondido, Calif., a 16-year-old girl and three teenage boys went on an arson spree last March. The group set four fires at three schools, causing damage that will cost more than $1 million to repair. A 16-year-old girl from Cape Cod, Mass., who had been drinking stabbed her male cousin, severely injuring...
...because of good police work and what Pat O'Brien, Cook County deputy state's attorney, describes as "the defendants' inability to keep their mouths shut" about the crime. "It was a badge," he explains. "It was something they talked about as if it gave them status within that group of guys." Youngsters offhandedly refer to innocent passersby caught in the line of gunfire between two gangs as "mushrooms." "That is callous," observes Edward Loughran, commissioner of the Massachusetts department of youth services. "Alienated is too weak a word to describe these kids...
Members of a group learn about sex from one another, experiment with drugs together and look to their friends for a sense of belonging and approval. Notes Alan Morris, chief of the adolescent unit of the Illinois State Psychiatric Institute in Chicago: "Some kids, especially younger adolescents, have an exquisite sensitivity to what their peers think. They won't go to school if their shoelaces are the wrong color...
...look elsewhere for companionship, acceptance and values. Odell Edwards, a 20-year-old serving time in a Ventura, Calif., juvenile facility for attempted murder and other offenses, recalls that by the age of 14 he was spending most of his time away from home and hanging out with a group of friends that he called his "homeboys." Says Edwards: "I never really had anyone to talk to. My father was gone. I had no one to turn to when I was in trouble, except my homeboys. They became my family...