seriously why all these dun happen during my times when i
was young & wild. I reali envy young guys
nowaday.......wow this girl gotta to make luv to 15 guys before she
can leave a gang...lucky guys!!
These girls actually go out and look for men to fulfil their
material needs....sighhhh...if only i do not have a moral
conscience 
...i still
remember many years back calling chicken with a bunch of frens in
thailand and i rejected an underaged one....aiyooo...so jiak arkkk
....but
now,,,,,this is happening right here on our home ground!
Girls behaving badly @ AsiaOne 22 Mar
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Some girls here are getting wilder and getting into trouble with
the law. They are getting arrested for causing serious hurt and
rioting. They also join gangs and experiment with sex at a younger
age, some as young as 10. Joan Chew, Chia Mei Liang, He Xingying
and Ong Dai Lin report on young girls running wild.
JANE joined a gang at 13 after getting to know its members
through her friends. She skipped school to smoke, drink, play cards
and steal bicycles at void decks.
At first, she was just looking for a bit of fun. But soon, she
was sniffing glue at HDB staircases, selling illegal cigarettes at
the housing estate opposite her school and picking fights with
other gangs.
During one of these fights, the police showed up. By 14, she was
placed in a girls' shelter after her father declared her Beyond
Parental Control.
Other girls like Jane are getting into all kinds of trouble with
the law.
Last year, 46 girls - aged seven to 19 - were arrested for
causing serious hurt and rioting. Another 766 were picked up for
theft.
Overall, the number of girls arrested over the past three years
for causing serious hurt and rioting has come down, according to
police.
But more parents are giving up on delinquent daughters than
sons, and seeking help at the Juvenile Court. In the last two
years, more Beyond Parental Control complaints were filed against
girls than boys.
In 2006, 86 girls were hauled to court by their parents and
declared out of control, compared to 61 boys. The figure for girls
was 70 the year before.
Children declared Beyond Parental Control are those below 16 who
misbehave to such an extent that their parents feel they can no
longer control them and need the court's assistance to manage
them.
More girls are also experimenting with sex, some as young as 10.
In 2006, teenagers accounted for 12 per cent of about 12,000
abortions performed in Singapore. Of these, 19 were carried out on
girls below 15, according to the Health Ministry.
More girls between the ages of 10 to 19 are also contracting
sexually transmitted infections. In 2006, more than 500 of such
cases were diagnosed at the Department of Sexually Transmitted
Infections Control Clinic - a three- fold increase from five years
ago.
Self-mutilation is another emerging spectre. Although there are
no statistics available, counsellors and social workers say girls
are more likely to cut or bruise themselves than boys.
The danger is that when they are not taught other coping
methods, the cuts get progressively deeper, till they land in
hospital.
Cyber bullying
ANOTHER worrying trend is cyber bullying among girls, abetted by
the Internet and mobile phones today.
Many hide behind computer screens to bully their victims,
instead of confronting them in person. On blogs, they abuse their
victims using expletives, deface their pictures and spread vicious
rumours about them.
Since polytechnic student Esther Chia, 18, set up a blog
documenting her daily life last May, she has seen mocking
photographs of a boy imitating her 'doe-eyed innocent look'. Others
have left jeers like 'you are ugly' and 'you suck' on her blog.
'When I have had a hard day, seeing such comments when I get
home makes me feel worse,' says the teen who receives about 3,000
hits on her blog daily and is now hardened to the routine
abuse.
According to Ms Esther Ng, who founded Coalition Against
Bullying for Children and Youths in 2005 to stamp out such
behaviour, female cyber bullies choose to assault others online
because they can stay comfortably anonymous.
'The Internet is one of the simplest tools to use. It is easily
available and the bully doesn't have to face the victim. It also
spreads faster and the bullies think they will not get caught,' she
adds.
Increasingly too, girls are using their cellphones to record
acts of bullying and aggression. They then post the video clips on
free video-sharing websites like YouTube to humiliate their
victims.
For extra bragging rights, they also circulate the clips among
their friends using Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) or Bluetooth
technology.
A widely circulated and disturbing four-minute video posted
online was brought up in Parliament in January by Jalan Besar GRC
MP Lily Neo. It showed four girls laughing gleefully as they
punched, slapped and stripped their 13-year-old victim at an HDB
staircase landing. They stopped only when onlookers gathered.
The victim hung her head in shame throughout. But like many
other bullying clips posted online, it spread like wildfire. Ms Ng
observes: 'There are schools where almost everybody has seen the
video.'
Hard candy
THE Internet is also used by girls to hunt down men willing to
pay - in cash or branded goods - for sex.
Popular advertisement websites such as SgAdsOnline and
Craigslist Singapore carry advertisements of teenage girls offering
one-night stands for fast cash.
Others use sexy blogs as a tool to hunt down Sugar Daddies
willing to pay for a 'relationship'.
One 17-year-old, who calls herself a 'teenage Lolita',
documented her sexual experiences and said she is looking for a man
who can give her $500 per meeting.
She wrote that she is 'not poor' but 'hankers after the better
things in life'.
'I'm not selling my body. I call it a mutually beneficial
relationship,' she declared in one entry.
Others post photographs of themselves in skimpy outfits on
social networking websites like Friendster and Facebook.
Teen blogger Celeste Chen thrusts her hips suggestively in a
midriff-baring blouse in one MTV-style video posted on her blog.
The 17-year-old schoolgirl's Friendster profile features a
wallpaper of her in a backless top, matched with black hot pants
and high heels. She declined to be interviewed for this report.
Why are girls behaving so badly?
Counsellors say dysfunctional media influences like pop star
Britney Spears, rising materialism and weakening family bonds are
possible factors.
Many girls feel pressured to look good and dress well. When they
do not have the money to buy what they want, they resort to
begging, borrowing, stealing or selling sex.
Most start out by shoplifting items like accessories, clothes,
bags and cosmetics, notes Ms Eileen Chua, assistant director of
Lakeside Family Centre, which has seen more delinquent girls over
the years.
Sandy, 15, says she took to peddling illegal cigarettes at the
void deck to supplement her $5 daily allowance. She made about $150
a day.
'I used to steal money from my father but my friend told me not
to do it. She introduced me to selling cigarettes instead,' says
the Secondary 3 dropout.
But the money ran out soon after she ran away from home.
Bad girls, good homes
IT USED to be that bad girls who stole, fought and joined gangs
mostly came from broken families. Not any more, say
counsellors.
In recent years, many who face court orders or get caught by the
police come from intact homes, says Dr Carol Balhetchet, director
of youth services at the Singapore Children's Society.
In 2006, 69 per cent of new probation cases involved delinquent
youth who come from two-parent nuclear families, according to the
Ministry of Community Development, Youth and Sports (MCYS).
'Teenagers today have the attitude that no one can discipline
them or make them do what they don't want to do,' says social
worker Ms Chua.
Indeed, Mr Mohamed Juffri openly admits he has lost control of
his eldest daughter, who just turned 14. She tells lies and stays
away from home for days at a stretch. 'I'm worried that she may be
hanging out with gangs.
I don't know who her friends are,' he says.
Last month, the 40-year-old security officer and his sales
promoter wife hardened their hearts and filed a Beyond Parental
Control court order against her.
'This is our last resort. We do not want her to waste her life
away,' he says sadly. In between all the 12-hour shifts he worked,
she became a stranger.
Sister Maria Sylvia Ng, formerly in charge of Poverello Teen
Centre, a drop-in centre for delinquent youth, warns: 'If parents
do not inculcate values in their children when they are young,
there is no holding them back when they reach adolescence.'
Farhana, 14, knows her mother loses sleep whenever she hangs out
with friends at West Coast Park past 11 pm. But she shrugs it
off.
She used to see very little of her mother, who worked long hours
as a restaurant helper. The Secondary 2 student rationalises: 'When
I wanted to talk to her, she was always not there.'
Her mother has quit her job to spend more time with her, but it
is too little, too late for Farhana. She rants: 'I don't understand
my mother. I tell her who I'm with but she's still worried. When I
come home late, she calls the police. We often quarrel about
this.'
Dr Balhetchet says teens like Farhana often make it difficult
for parents to talk to them. In their desire to grow up fast and be
independent, they send out messages to their parents to 'leave them
alone'.
But what they really hanker after - at any age - is time and
attention. So most neglected youth misbehave to get their parents
to notice them, notes counsellor Stella Tan from Yong-En Care
Centre.
'They know that their parents will have to spend more time with
them in order to scold them,' she says.
She stresses the importance of parents being there for their
children.
'When they are young, they may bore you with minor details about
school. But if you shut them off, they grow up thinking that you do
not have time for them.
'Eventually when you start to get interested in what they do,
they will say they have no time to talk to you.'
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