I had not wept in an advice surgery until a few weeks ago, when a distraught mother and father came to see me after learning that their teenage daughter had been subjected to the most brutal assault I have ever heard about. A group of young men had subjected this girl to a violent sexual attack, first raping her, then pouring acid over her body.
It seems futile to try to rationalise this act. How can such disregard for humanity be explained? Almost certainly it cannot. Yet there is something that links this horrifying example of male aggression with so much of the violence that society has witnessed this past year. We are not just seeing young people attack one another on Britain’s streets; the common theme is that it is predominantly young men who are doing so. This may be a statement of the obvious, but it is one that we cannot ignore. Had this stream of violence been perpetrated almost exclusively by young women, gender would rightly have been invoked as one of the factors. The same must be done in relation to young men.
- 97% of juvenile offenders aged 15-17 are boys
- 13% of boys aged 11-15 suffer from a mental disorder, compared with 10% of girls
- 76% of boys aged 11 achieve government-set literacy levels (85% of girls do)
- 57% of boys achieved A-C grade GCSEs in 2007, compared with 66% of girls
- 75% of all suicides occur among young men aged 15-34. Suicide is the second most common way for a male aged 15-34 to die
- 70%+ of males aged under 18 who are charged for one offence go on to commit further crimes
- 9 out of 10 gang members are male
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