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Coffeeshop Chit Chat - 16-year-old Teen Terror</TD><TD id=msgunetc noWrap align=right>
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Tue, Aug 25, 2009
The Straits Times
Teen terror
By Wong Kim Hoh
That the mind of a 16-year-old could be so vicious almost beggars belief.
One day in June last year, Azlina (not her real name) called up a chatline and enticed a man with an indecent proposal: to 'break the virginity' of a 13-year-old who had slighted and bad-mouthed her.
Together with a group of friends, she met the man at the void deck of a block of flats in Woodlands. There, on a staircase landing, she commanded him to rape the teenager so that she could capture it on her mobile phone.
When he failed to 'perform', Azlina forced the girl to give him oral sex. When the deed was done and he had left, she and her gang shepherded the victim to a carpark where they rained kicks and blows on her before stripping off her blouse and bra.
In February 2009, Azlina pleaded guilty to five charges, including rioting, outrage of modesty and instigating rape. Four other charges relating to the sexual assault and theft were taken into consideration during sentencing.
She is now at the Reformative Training Centre in Changi Women's Prison where she has to undergo, among other things, counselling and vocational training. She also has to carry on with her studies.
Azlina has to stay in prison for at least 18 months. With good behaviour, she will be allowed to go home but must be electronically tagged to monitor her movements.
At the time of this interview, Azlina had served a few weeks at the centre.
She looks like a child-woman but has an aura which suggests that she is an old soul, albeit a slightly unhinged one.
There are bald patches in her closely cropped hair, as though tufts had been forcibly yanked out.
Her forearms are lacerated with scars. On her legs are clusters of keloids that form crazy patterns. It's her version of tattoos, she says.
'I did them here in prison, by digging my fingernails into the skin. I like to feel pain. Other people shout when they're in pain but not me,' she says smugly.
She giggles freely, knows how to pause for dramatic effect when talking about her past, and is convincingly nonchalant when she is being frugal with the truth.
Shy and timid one moment, aggressive and cavalier the next, she makes a compelling, if unsettling interviewee. Her complexity is not entirely surprising given her tangled background.
She claims she was born out of wedlock in a prison and that her mother was a drug addict.
'I heard she gave birth to two other children, all fathered by different men,' says Azlina, adding that the only thing she knows of her father is that he is Chinese.
Her foster parents are factory workers with four children of their own. 'They really tampered me,' says Azlina, whose English is fractured and who does not quite know the difference between 'tamper' and 'pamper'.
It's hard not to be shocked by her account of her childhood.
She started stealing as a child, ran away from school when she was in Primary 6, and was smoking and taking drugs at 11.
She blames her rebelliousness on her foster father, a violent man who regularly assaulted his wife and family.
To curb her uncontrollably wild ways, Azlina was packed off to several girls' homes. She was, by her own admission, a menace to other girls in these places.
'I like to irritate people. I want to push people to see how far I can go. I never get beaten; I beat people up,' she says.
Solitary confinements and other punishments would, she brags, make her only more violent.
'I would cry, but when it's over, I would forget the punishment and become determined to do it again,' she says with eyes flashing.
The recklessness never stopped. She stole from her mother who reappeared in her life for a short period in 2005.
Azlina also threatened to beat up her foster mother who berated her for taking drugs and sleeping in the staircase landings of HDB blocks.
She then left home, moved in with several juvenile delinquents and even got engaged to an ex-convict, whose occupation she does not quite know. She subsequently had an abortion.
Early one evening, at a night bazaar, she bumped into an acquaintance, S, whom she knew in primary school.
'She complained about me smoking in school and for that I got disciplined in public,' Azlina recalls bitterly.
When she told her group of friends of her meeting with S, she discovered that they too knew her.
One day, she invited S to join her and her friends at one of their homes.
'The plan at first was only to frighten her. But my hand just started to move and I began slapping her. My friends followed my lead, and so all 13 of us slapped her. I also banged her head against the wall. Her face swelled up,' she says.
Not content with the pain they had inflicted on S, Azlina next called up a chatline to put a more diabolical plan into action.
'She claimed she was a virgin but my friend said S did things with her brother. I wanted to know if she was lying,' Azlina says.
She arranged for the man she contacted on the chatline to meet them at a block of flats in Woodlands. The plan was to have him rape S.
At this point, she turns contemptuous. 'If S had a brain, she would have run or called for help. If I were that girl, I would have just begged for someone to help me. We were sitting on the staircase landing in a block of flats. Many people walked past. She was there when we called the chatline; she knew what we were going to do.'
The case and Azlina's trial, not surprisingly, made headlines this year. Petulantly, the teenager takes great pains to impress upon me that her partners in crime heaped all the blame on her, and that newspaper reports on her role were unfair and inaccurate.
She also takes great delight in divulging what she considers important details - how she took pity on S after the carpark beating and gave her water to drink, how she took care to powder the girl's face and wipe her body to make sure there were no fingerprints on her.
As an indication of just how complex her psyche is, Azlina next made a bizarre telephone call to the police, one which was to lead to her arrest.
As the interview draws to an end, she sighs and says:
'I'm sick and tired of my life. Actually I've put up with a lot. If not, I wouldn't even be here.'
'You also need your parents to guide you. If you don't know your natural parents...,' she tails off.
It is an emotional plea for understanding, though one cannot help but wonder if she means what she says. She leaves the room, just as unfathomable as she was when she entered it two hours earlier.
This article was first published in The Straits Times.
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Tue, Aug 25, 2009
The Straits Times
Teen terror
By Wong Kim Hoh
That the mind of a 16-year-old could be so vicious almost beggars belief.
One day in June last year, Azlina (not her real name) called up a chatline and enticed a man with an indecent proposal: to 'break the virginity' of a 13-year-old who had slighted and bad-mouthed her.
Together with a group of friends, she met the man at the void deck of a block of flats in Woodlands. There, on a staircase landing, she commanded him to rape the teenager so that she could capture it on her mobile phone.
When he failed to 'perform', Azlina forced the girl to give him oral sex. When the deed was done and he had left, she and her gang shepherded the victim to a carpark where they rained kicks and blows on her before stripping off her blouse and bra.
In February 2009, Azlina pleaded guilty to five charges, including rioting, outrage of modesty and instigating rape. Four other charges relating to the sexual assault and theft were taken into consideration during sentencing.
She is now at the Reformative Training Centre in Changi Women's Prison where she has to undergo, among other things, counselling and vocational training. She also has to carry on with her studies.
Azlina has to stay in prison for at least 18 months. With good behaviour, she will be allowed to go home but must be electronically tagged to monitor her movements.
At the time of this interview, Azlina had served a few weeks at the centre.
She looks like a child-woman but has an aura which suggests that she is an old soul, albeit a slightly unhinged one.
There are bald patches in her closely cropped hair, as though tufts had been forcibly yanked out.
Her forearms are lacerated with scars. On her legs are clusters of keloids that form crazy patterns. It's her version of tattoos, she says.
'I did them here in prison, by digging my fingernails into the skin. I like to feel pain. Other people shout when they're in pain but not me,' she says smugly.
She giggles freely, knows how to pause for dramatic effect when talking about her past, and is convincingly nonchalant when she is being frugal with the truth.
Shy and timid one moment, aggressive and cavalier the next, she makes a compelling, if unsettling interviewee. Her complexity is not entirely surprising given her tangled background.
She claims she was born out of wedlock in a prison and that her mother was a drug addict.
'I heard she gave birth to two other children, all fathered by different men,' says Azlina, adding that the only thing she knows of her father is that he is Chinese.
Her foster parents are factory workers with four children of their own. 'They really tampered me,' says Azlina, whose English is fractured and who does not quite know the difference between 'tamper' and 'pamper'.
It's hard not to be shocked by her account of her childhood.
She started stealing as a child, ran away from school when she was in Primary 6, and was smoking and taking drugs at 11.
She blames her rebelliousness on her foster father, a violent man who regularly assaulted his wife and family.
To curb her uncontrollably wild ways, Azlina was packed off to several girls' homes. She was, by her own admission, a menace to other girls in these places.
'I like to irritate people. I want to push people to see how far I can go. I never get beaten; I beat people up,' she says.
Solitary confinements and other punishments would, she brags, make her only more violent.
'I would cry, but when it's over, I would forget the punishment and become determined to do it again,' she says with eyes flashing.
The recklessness never stopped. She stole from her mother who reappeared in her life for a short period in 2005.
Azlina also threatened to beat up her foster mother who berated her for taking drugs and sleeping in the staircase landings of HDB blocks.
She then left home, moved in with several juvenile delinquents and even got engaged to an ex-convict, whose occupation she does not quite know. She subsequently had an abortion.
Early one evening, at a night bazaar, she bumped into an acquaintance, S, whom she knew in primary school.
'She complained about me smoking in school and for that I got disciplined in public,' Azlina recalls bitterly.
When she told her group of friends of her meeting with S, she discovered that they too knew her.
One day, she invited S to join her and her friends at one of their homes.
'The plan at first was only to frighten her. But my hand just started to move and I began slapping her. My friends followed my lead, and so all 13 of us slapped her. I also banged her head against the wall. Her face swelled up,' she says.
Not content with the pain they had inflicted on S, Azlina next called up a chatline to put a more diabolical plan into action.
'She claimed she was a virgin but my friend said S did things with her brother. I wanted to know if she was lying,' Azlina says.
She arranged for the man she contacted on the chatline to meet them at a block of flats in Woodlands. The plan was to have him rape S.
At this point, she turns contemptuous. 'If S had a brain, she would have run or called for help. If I were that girl, I would have just begged for someone to help me. We were sitting on the staircase landing in a block of flats. Many people walked past. She was there when we called the chatline; she knew what we were going to do.'
The case and Azlina's trial, not surprisingly, made headlines this year. Petulantly, the teenager takes great pains to impress upon me that her partners in crime heaped all the blame on her, and that newspaper reports on her role were unfair and inaccurate.
She also takes great delight in divulging what she considers important details - how she took pity on S after the carpark beating and gave her water to drink, how she took care to powder the girl's face and wipe her body to make sure there were no fingerprints on her.
As an indication of just how complex her psyche is, Azlina next made a bizarre telephone call to the police, one which was to lead to her arrest.
As the interview draws to an end, she sighs and says:
'I'm sick and tired of my life. Actually I've put up with a lot. If not, I wouldn't even be here.'
'You also need your parents to guide you. If you don't know your natural parents...,' she tails off.
It is an emotional plea for understanding, though one cannot help but wonder if she means what she says. She leaves the room, just as unfathomable as she was when she entered it two hours earlier.
This article was first published in The Straits Times.
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