Again & again Uk Cities

Girls of 14 pick fights for no reason... many depend on drink to cope
A DRUNKEN rabble(a noisy or violent crowd of people)of teenagers insult passers-by and it's clear that at any moment their taunts (a cruel remark that is intended to make someone angry or upset)could explode into violence.
Until recently these gangs(a group of young people who spend time together and often cause trouble)were made up of male youths, but now more and more teenage GIRLS are also turning to drunken violence.

In a week where female violence has dominated the headlines, one woman knows exactly what it is like to be on the frontline.

Peaches Cadogan was just 20 when she was jailed for two robberies, fraud, deception and handling stolen goods.

The mum of one, from Hackney, East London, says: "After problems at home I started hanging out on the streets and, in 1998, I was sentenced to two years in prison.

"My four-year-old daughter was left without her mother and, when I came out, I had to work hard to prove I could be a good parent."
She did turn her life around and set up youth work organisation Reality Bytes, which uses art, drama and other motivational work to help young people at risk and in trouble. She says: "The girls we work with have started fights just because they feel like it, and are in that mood.

"I see girls drinking from the age of 14. They see it as cool. They have been involved in fighting and brawling (to fight in a noisy way, especially in a public place), and behaving anti-socially.

"Playing around with someone is a game to them, but they often have no other alternative. They can't get into a school as their behaviour is too bad, and 75 per cent of the young ladies I work with are either in pupil referral units or aren't in education."

Alcohol is often a huge part of the problem. Peaches says: "I see more and more young ladies becoming dependent on drink as it provokes a sense of being able to deal with anything.

"After alcohol they can be violent. But we have to look at influences from their families. If Mum and Dad are alcoholic they will see having a drink every day before 10am as normal."

Last week sickening footage of five women brutally attacking a defenceless man in Grimsby shocked the nation and illustrated the link between drinking and violence.
They each admitted affray (a noisy argument or fight in a public place) and were yesterday jailed for six months.

The women, all family, had been boozing all day and picked on an innocent passer-by as he walked home from a night out. CCTV shows them flinging punches and kicks as their victim holds up his arms in surrender.

After the court case, victim Matthew Campbell, 38, a commerical driver, said: "It was an attack for no reason, that was the confusing part. You expect women to behave differently."
One of the gang, Katie Tomlinson, 21, from Grimsby, confesses her love of booze on social networking site Bebo. She admits: "Happiest When im all stella'd up n partyin."

Like Matthew Campbell, Richard Tailby, 21, was also set upon by a gang of women in Grimsby. Richard was attacked in a car park by three women after his pal jokingly wolf-whistled them. Vanessa Delaney, 38, Claire Edwards, 25, and Sally Pawson, 24, all from Grimsby, had been drinking vodka and one even turned up at court clutching a can of lager (a type of light-coloured beer, or a glass of this beer).

They admitted assault and magistrate Mike Corry told them: "You were like a pack of animals chasing their prey." But each walked free in August with three-month suspended jail terms.

Richard told : "It was frightening because I'd done nothing to deserve it. I don't go out now. If I want a drink I stay at home."
Jagged (a jagged surface or edge has a lot of rough pointed parts that make it look broken or torn)
And the Grimsby girls are not alone. In February air hostess Lisa Kee, an ex-model, was jailed for two and a half years for slashing a student in the face with a glass following a bar row.

Kee, 29, of Stockport, Cheshire, threw wine over Liam Sharrat then dragged a jagged glass down his face, slicing open his cheek, after he laughed at her in a trendy nightspot.

Her sentence was cut to 21 months on appeal but her victim, a 26-year-old PhD student suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and permanent scarring. Meanwhile in a Gloucester nightclub, Karina Maguire, 19, punched a man then took off a stiletto (stilettostiletto heela thin high heel on a woman’s shoe) and attacked him with the heel. Michael Freeman was left with blood pouring from a wound near his eye. In February Maguire got three months' jail suspended for two years, and a curfew.
Statistics released last week from the British Crime Survey revealed assaults by women had soared by 150 per cent in ten years. In 1998 3,209 common assaults were committed by females, but that figure rocketed to 8,068 last year.

Violence is now the top reason for women being arrested in England and Wales, overtaking shoplifting and handling stolen goods.

And British schoolgirls are now the worst drunks in Europe, with 33 per cent of 13 and 15-year-olds having been drunk at least twice - more than double the numbers in France and Italy.

Peaches says: "These girls need help boosting their self-esteem, and to come back into the community. They need support in education.

"More and more young ladies are dependent on alcohol for social reasons. By having alcohol they feel they can escape reality.

"But we have a generation of young people whose parents have always said, 'Help yourself', as opposed to managing their drinking. Both parents and young people need to take responsibility."