Teenagers And Sex Crimes

By Anastasia Toufexis

The horrible story had circulated in the halls of Glen Ridge (N.J.) High School for months. Last week the scandal broke into the open when police arrested five teenagers and charged them with sexually attacking a mentally impaired 17-year-old girl. According to investigators, the girl was invited to the home of two of the youths on March 1, where she was forced by the five suspects to perform sexual acts and violated with a broomstick and miniature baseball bat while eight other young men watched.

The crime has convulsed Glen Ridge, a well-off community of 7,700 that likes to think of itself as a large family. The girl has known at least two of the youths since grammar school; she and the accused are white. The alleged assailants are among the town's favored sons: Kyle and Kevin Scherzer, 18- year-old twins, and Peter Quigley, also 18, are stars of the football team. The two other youths who were arrested were under 18 at the time of the attack, and their identities have not been released. Among the eight onlookers: the 18-year-old son of a local police lieutenant.

The news of the assault comes less than two months after the entire nation was shocked by the gang rape and near fatal beating of a white jogger in New York City's Central Park, allegedly by six black and Hispanic youths. Taken together, the two cases brutally demonstrate that sexual violence by adolescents transcends racial and class lines. Such attacks are now increasingly common across the U.S. According to the FBI, the number of arrests for rape committed by boys 18 years old or younger rose by 14.6% between 1983 and 1987.

In Los Angeles last April, a twelve-year-old girl was kidnaped and assaulted over the next four days by dozens of teenage members of the Rolling 40s Crips gang. Five months ago in Columbia, S.C., two boys ages 13 and 14 were charged with raping an eleven-year-old girl in school. In Houston last October, three youths ages 14, 15 and 16 abducted and raped a 26-year-old woman during a three-day crime spree.

The rising tide of assaults has created a rippling pool of fear. Some teachers now send little girls to the bathroom in pairs. Young women say they are afraid to take a shower or run the hair dryer; the noise could mask an assailant's approach. At college parties, many coeds clutch their cocktail glasses, worried that knockout drops could be slipped into their drinks.

Many people fear gang rapes or being the random target of a sociopath. In fact, say many experts, the offending youth most often acts alone, is a respectable member of the community and knows the victim. So-called date rape is one of the most common adolescent sexual crimes.

What leads young men to commit such deeds? It has become a truism to say that rape is an act of violence, not of sex. But experts insist that sexual gratification is a factor in attacks by adolescents. The teen years are ones of intense sexual stirrings and strong aggressive impulses. And many youths are simply socially inept and unable to woo female affection. Frustrated, they take what they want.

But environment probably has a much greater influence than hormones. Says Kim Gandy of the National Organization for Women: "Our children are learning that it is acceptable to victimize women." It starts at home. "Ideally, kids learn about sexuality by watching loving parents," observes Arnold Goldstein, director of the Center for Research on Aggression at Syracuse University. "Unfortunately, all too often, rather than kissing the wife, the husband yells at her." Or beats her. Teachers feed youngsters the facts of sexuality but cannot convey the emotional complexities.

Even when parents and schools provide sensitive teaching, it is undermined by social signals. "Sex and violence have become inextricably confused in the minds of young people," says sociologist Gail Dines-Levy of Boston's Wheelock College. Instead of pajama parties, youngsters today attend "gross-out" gatherings, where the entertainment is rented "slasher" films that erotically depict the torture, rape and murder of women. Notes psychologist Daniel Linz of the University of California at Santa Barbara: "The first sexual experience for many boys is at a slasher movie."

Rock lyrics blare out perverse messages, which are often reinforced by music videos. Motley Crue's Too Fast for Love boasts, "I'll either break her face or I'll take down her legs, get my ways at will." And in Predator a few years ago, Genocide sang of a "heart ripped from the chest decapitated, a meal of vaginas and breasts." Advertisements for apparel, meanwhile, feature thinly disguised images of female bondage or subjugation.

The result of the media barrage is adolescent males who are desensitized to women's pain and suffering. It is an infectious malaise that not only enables attackers to do as they will but also allows bystanders to watch and do nothing, and still others to hear of brutalities and not be horrified. That psychic numbness, predict experts, will have consequences far beyond the increasing victimization of women. If young people do not have a feeling of connectedness with other human beings and if they have no empathy, guilt, shame or sense of responsibility, then ultimately the value of human life will be lost.

With reporting by Mary Cronin/New York, with other bureaus