Since I have your attention, I thought I would post today's column by Colbert King, a very Liberal columnist for the "Washington Post," and see if you agree with him. He is angry because the girl involved is not getting Institutional help from the "system."
I am angry that he thinks she should. When you look at what is admitted, and what you can reasonably infer from that, it is obvious that she is a fully committed, active and unrepentant junkie gang member. She is "16 going on 40." "Bleeding hearts" like King are part of the problem.
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washingtonpost.com
Sweet Sixteen and Running Scared
By Colbert I. King
Saturday, November 15, 2003; Page A23
Think back to when you were 16. If it's all kind of hazy, then try to recall someone else at that age: maybe a daughter, niece, grandchild or a kid down the block. Ah, 16: high school, fashion trends, secret longings, coming of age.
Now return with me to the Adams Morgan community that we visited last week. It's Tuesday afternoon in an apartment only a stone's throw from Columbia Road NW. I'm sitting on the sofa facing a 48-year-old man, a certified computer technician working on completing a bachelor's degree in computer technology. He agreed to take in his drug-addicted sister's two children for a year while she straightened herself out. "She couldn't make it," the uncle tells me, so his sister's children are still living with him, his wife and their 4-year-old son. His nephew is away at school, but the niece and her closest girlfriend are in the room with us, seated on my right.
Both girls are 16.
The niece is the one I've come to see. She looks fine now, but appearances can be deceiving. A week ago she was in the hospital. Her stay at Washington Hospital Center had nothing to do with overindulgence in cake and ice cream at a sweet 16 party. She landed in the hospital's emergency room because of a Halloween night get-together in Virginia that nearly took her life.
Three girls jumped her as she was leaving the party. She was stabbed, beaten and kicked. The knifing left cuts on her chest, abdomen and pelvis. The blade also punctured her lung; it narrowly missed her liver and other vital organs. She left the hospital with a draining tube in her chest.
She knew her assailants. They are members of a gang, Vatos Locos, which has roots in the Adams Morgan and Columbia Heights sections of the District. The niece is a Vatos Locos member, too.
Because she is a juvenile, an assault victim and regarded as a possible crime witness, her identity will not be disclosed. Neither will her uncle's. Both, however, agreed to be interviewed. And I have, for the record, provided my editor, Fred Hiatt, with their names, address and other pertinent information.
I am with the family because the uncle doesn't know where else to turn for help. He hands me copies of a Nov. 5 e-mail he has sent to various public officials and community leaders in the city, including the principal of his niece's school. The message notifies them of her stabbing and pleads for help in addressing what he described as "this terrible scourge" of gang violence plaguing the community. He's desperately trying to save her life.
The principal has been in touch, but the rest of the school system's higher-ups and D.C. government officials treat the uncle as a nonperson: no responses. Not even a get-well card.
And so we sit in the living room and talk. I hear about a young girl who was on the honor roll last year and active in a church-sponsored neighborhood organization; a teenager who lost something precious when her mother left her life, a victim of the drug culture. Today she's in the middle of a tug of war between her uncle and the streets. The uncle thinks he's losing.
The battle started last year when the uncle noticed that this prized student was not coming home from school as usual. She started staying out later and later, sometimes not coming home for days. He learned she was getting high on drugs and fooling around with undesirable kids. So he asked her school counselors for help. They couldn't provide counseling, so he turned to a community group in Columbia Heights. He said the group's counselors pinpointed her problem as an overprotective home and recommended that she be allowed to attend after-school dance instruction. She did, over his objections. He later discovered that she was not attending dance classes but instead going elsewhere with her new friends.
Her absences from home continued. The uncle said he filed at least 10 missing-child reports with the police. The police never located her; she was usually found by him or his wife. Once they discovered her sleeping on the stairway of the apartment building. Another time she was found in the neighborhood, again high on drugs.
But that was before Aug. 2, when in the wee hours of the morning, things really went to hell.
The niece, by then a full-blown runaway, was sleeping in an apartment off North Capitol Street in Northeast Washington. A 19-year-old man, Samuel Avila, was also there with his girlfriend. Three men came to the apartment, the niece said, and took Avila outside. Shots were fired. She said she didn't see the shooting, but later saw his body. Two men were subsequently arrested and charged with the murder.
She didn't tell me this, but press accounts say the arrested men were affiliated with Vatos Locos. Avila reportedly lived on Columbia Road but was thought to be a member of another rival gang, Street Thug Criminals, also known as STC. The press reported retaliatory killings of Vatos Locos members as a result of Avila's slaying. But we don't get into that.
The conversation continues.
The niece says the police had her in for questioning twice, but she never "snitched" on anyone. The gang knew about her police interviews, but she contends the authorities got their information about the murder from someone in the apartment who was better acquainted with Avila.
The uncle says that his niece was lured to the Halloween party and stabbed, either in an attempt to kill a crime witness or in retaliation for talking to the police. Neither the niece nor her best friend -- also present at the Halloween-night stabbing -- disputes the uncle's speculation. But the niece tells me she still wants to stay in the area. "This is my community," she says.
She's asked how she came to join Vatos Locos. Before she can answer, the uncle interjects that it was by sexual initiation. In a flash of anger, the niece tells him he's wrong. "There are two ways to get in," she says. "That way [gang rape], and the other is when they jump you."
Come again?
"It's when a group of people beat you up. It doesn't last long," she says. She maintains that's how she got in.
So, how do you get out?
"When they jump you," she says. Well, she's asked, after what happened Halloween night, are you in or out?
She thinks she's still in Vatos Locos.
I take a good look. The niece tries to come across as fearless and confident. It's all bravado. She's 16, a prisoner in her apartment, and she's scared.
Here is a girl locked in a world unknown to most people. It's a world of "skip parties," where kids like her are recruited at school and encouraged by gangs to cut classes and hang out in apartments where drugs and alcohol are plentiful and sex, willing and otherwise, is had.
It's a world that gives kids a feeling of being special, because they are set apart from others by hand signs and graffiti and colors. It's a rough world, yes, but one where they have a sense of family, security and mutual protection.
It's a world that will get her killed if she doesn't get the hell out.
And so, in this city that loves to speak world without end of its love for children -- that spends millions on bureaucracies and nonprofits that profess to place kids first -- who can help rescue this young girl?
The cops are out to close cases. The prosecutors are out to make cases. And the D.C. government, politicians and nonprofits are out to hold workshops. But who will actually help her?
For goodness' sake. She's only 16 years old.
washingtonpost.com |
