Police chiefs, school teachers, and social workers are all reporting an alarming new trend in the U.S. Girls are becoming more violent, more often. Justice Department statistics show that violent acts by teenage boys outstrips acts by teenage girls 4 to 1. However, a generation ago it was 10 to 1.

Former Baltimore school police chief Jansen Robinson, commented that girls have gradually become as violent as boys. "It's a nationwide phenomenon, and it's catching us all off guard."

Lauren Abramson, director of the Community Conferencing Center, a Baltimore agency that resolves disputes through mediation, has observed that gossip is often the root of aggression between girls. "Gossip as a source of violence is understudied and little understood. But time and again, when we bring the parties together, get them to talk and dig into what started it all, it invariably comes back to something somebody heard somebody else said."

Sybella Artz, a researcher in bullying behavior and author of "Sex, Power and the Violent School Girl," has found that since girls are more verbally skilled than boys, their aggression is often displayed through malicious gossip, threats, and intimidation. "They will create factions, groups, or small cliques. And they will begin to character assassinate by creating rumors and gossip and building a consensus that a particular girl is in the wrong and deserves to be beaten and have retaliation. At the very least this will show up as exclusion or shunning. A girl will come to school and suddenly find herself excluded from a group that she once found she belonged to, and she won't be told what it's about."