Video-taped violence reveals problematic teens, rise of gangs

A series of interviews with the victims and relatives of teens involved in several shocking cases of violence, recorded footage of which went viral on YouTube and other social-media sites recently, revealed that the teens had difficulties adjusting to the realities of life.

One of the victims had left home after her father remarried, and one of the perpetrators tried to commit suicide when her parents refused to buy her a new cellular phone.

The violent images also reflected the rise of street gangs among Balinese youth, particularly young people living in urbanized parts of the island. Violence was seen by many of them as a way to maintain their gangs’ internal cohesion as well as to intimidate rival gangs.

The video showed several girls verbally and then physically assaulting a skinny girl. They hit and kicked her and then used a pair of scissors to cut the girl’s hair and clothes before they abandoned her in an empty field in south Denpasar. When the video went viral, so did the outrage among the Balinese public, who demanded that police hunt for and arrest the girls.

As of Thursday evening, Denpasar Police had named five girls as suspects. They were identified as DP, 16; MO, 17; MV, 16; RA, 15, and AO, 17. Two other teenagers were being questioned as witnesses. These girls and their victim are members of Cewek Macho Performance (CMP), an exclusively female biker gang established in December 2010, which has around 25 members. It turned out that the video was uploaded onto the Internet by one of the girls involved in the attack in order to publicly humiliate the victim. Instead, however, the move backfired on them.

The victim, identified as KA, 16, said that the beating took place last December.

“It is a tradition in the gang to beat up a member who makes a mistake. A fellow gang member said she was once beaten, but that took place before I joined the gang,” she said, adding that before the assault, AO had accused her of stealing money and disrespecting the gang’s uniform.

A police source revealed that the case was not AO’s first run-in with the law. A few months ago, police had questioned her for allegedly beating up a teenager. The police dropped the case because the victim didn’t press charges.

KA lives in a small house with plywood walls in a densely populated area of south Denpasar. The girl, who dropped out of school when she was in the fifth grade, left her parents’ house earlier this year. Since then, she has lived with her uncle and his family. There, she helps her aunt sell home-made cakes to food stalls in the area.

KA’s mother died when she was an infant and her father married a new woman several years ago.

The beating took place when KA was still living in her father’s house. “But he never knew about it. Even now, since the case became public, he never comes to see me,” she said.

DP’s father revealed that before his daughter assaulted KA, she herself had suffered a beating from her fellow gang members.

“I didn’t know about the incident. She told her mother but didn’t say anything to me,” he said, adding that DP had become lazier after she joined the gang.

Last year, she eventually dropped out of a private senior high school in Denpasar. The girl also became more demanding toward her parents.

“Whatever she wants, we must comply. She doesn’t care whether her parents have the money or not. Once she even tried to kill herself by drinking mosquito repellent purely because she wanted a new cellular phone and we refused,” Gunawan said.

Gunawan stressed that he loved his daughter deeply and hoped that she would be spared a prison sentence. “I never thought that my youngest daughter would become a criminal,” he said.

The police said the girls would be charged under Article 80 of the 2002 Child Protection Law on child violence, and Article 170 of the Criminal Code (KUHP) on assault and battery. “They are facing a maximum penalty of eight-and-a-half-years’ imprisonment,” Denpasar Police spokesman Adj. Comr. Ida Bagus Made Sarjana said.