In an April 28, 2009 article in the San Francisco Weekly.com is the story of three teenage girls, Felicia, Jillian and Kim. Besides being young teenagers, they had a couple more things in common--they were all three throwaways--and they were being tried for murder. In the article titled, Pretty Bad Girls, it states, "All had come from broken families, eventually becoming what investigators called "throwaways," the catch-all term for girls on their own at a young age. Struggling to support themselves and their drug-addled lifestyle, the teenagers had become close and built a family of their own."
The article details the events of one ill-fated evening in San Francisco where they lured a young man to the beach, shot and robbed him. This horrible tragedy, detailed in the link below, is yet another story of the terrible consequences of a throwaway teen. When teens have to run from abuse and neglect they often fall into hard crime on the streets to survive. Here, the ultimate crime was committed, and the biggest tragedy of all is clearly the loss of that young man's life. But the article also accurately states, "the situation of the throwaway girls is also tragic. They are these kids on the street, living adult lives. Kids that are raised in dysfunctional families...have very short childhoods. I think childhood is so painful for them that there's a tendency to want to grow up quicker just to get away."
These girls now wear prison garb and have to take responsibility for the pain they have caused--and I agree they should. But I also can't help but wonder if they were ever given any hope in their lives. Hope to see that there was much more in the world for them, and that they deserved to reach out and own it. I said...I wonder.