By Melissa Beutler
It seemed like an ordinary evening for a sixteen year-old Brighton High school junior as she walked toward her car parked in an affluent Salt Lake suburb on Nov. 27th.
According to the police report, things took a devastating turn as Elizabeth was attacked from behind, a blanket thrown over her head, knocked to the pavement, and repeatedly kicked and punched for several minutes.
Elizabeth said she thought someone was going to try to kill her and she screamed for help.
Her assailants removed the blanket, took a series of pictures and stole her personal belongings before running into the night.
Elizabeth lay semi-conscious in a pool of her own blood wondering who had attacked her and what their motive had been.
The ensuing police investigation determined three classmates – female classmates – had attacked her. In the police report, the girls said their only motive for attacking Elizabeth was that they did not like her and they wanted to scare her.
The girls had no prior criminal record and were above-average students, reportedly respected by their peers.
According to a 1993 Federal Bureau of Justice study, for every 1000 teenagers between 12-20 years old, six are raped, 13 are robbed and 100 are assaulted (27 with weapons).
Teenagers between 12 and 15 have the highest rates of assault of any group at 103 per 1000 or one in ten.
The Federal Bureau study determined violence is not just a city problem. Rural and suburban citizens experience a rate of victimization that is only about 1/3 lower than the urban rate.
According to a 2001 Surgeon General”s report on Youth Violence, about 30 to 40 percent of male and 16 to 32 percent of female youths commit a serious violence offense by age 17.
With guns and shootings in schools, police are placing officers in schools to combat conflicts before they reach violent levels.
“Most schools have implemented a zero tolerance policy to try and handle violence,” said Detective Dwayne Jensen, Salt Lake County Resource Officer.
The schools officers serve as a liaison between the school and the officers on the roads.
“We usually get copies of reports from incidents that occur outside of school so we know who to watch,” Jensen continued.
“There is definitely a bigger problem with violence than there was 20 years ago when I was in school.”
Recent studies indicate just how far violence has spread.
The University of Minnesota released data last November in the largest study on adolescent health to date. Under the direction of Dr. Robert Blum, researchers studied 90,000 adolescents from grades 7-12.
Blum concluded that 1 in 4 teens has been involved in weapon-related violence. Thirty-five percent of these youth admitted they had used a weapon to threaten or hurt someone in the last year.
Blum and his associates also uncovered surprising risk factors. Their findings suggest that stereotypical race and income factors are not the best indication of at-risk behavior.
Blum believes school performance and unstructured free time can predict trouble 25 to 40 percent of the time.
Rather than dismissing environment and race as the precursor to at-risk behavior, Blum advises white, middle-class parents to view his findings as a flashing red light.
