Violent Girls - The Fastest Growing Problem
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Violent Girls
- The Fastest Growing Problem
I don’t like Mondays. Mondays always get me down.
—reason given by 16 year-old Brenda Spencer after
being asked by police why she had opened fire on a
crowded playground of children at a San Diego El-
ementary School in 1979.1
ne night while her parents were out, fifteen-year-old
Casey sifted through their dresser to find the small revolver
they kept hidden; her mother kept it in the top drawer to pro-
tect the family from the “riff-raff” at the trailer park where they
lived. There was nothing more satisfying and suspenseful than
playing “Russian Roulette” with her younger brother, age ten,
and a few friends from the trailer park. Casey would put the
gun up to her brother’s head. The look of fear in his eyes when
she cocked the hammer gave her feelings of both power and
guilt. But once the game was over (and luckily no one was
hurt) Casey would become furious with her brother and threaten
to “slice his head” if he told anyone.” Her brother lived in
terror of Casey. He thought about the day a bullet would find
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its way into the chamber of the gun and cause him to lose his
young life. If this fear weren’t enough, he also had to deal with
Casey’s violent moods; she would hit him just for being in the
same room with her or if she felt he was getting on her nerves.
At the age of ten, this boy still wet the bed. But this all stopped
the day his sister was arrested and sent to juvenile.
I saw Casey after she had been in locked up in juvenile for
over a month. She had been caught at school with a box cutter
(considered a weapon) and suspended. The authorities were
called in because it was alleged that Casey had been making
threats against another girl, Anita. When I walked in and saw
Casey, she hardly looked the part of a potential killer. She had
long blond hair and baby blue eyes that looked up at me inno-
cently as I qu