Criminology

Our Guys by Bernard Lefkowitz is a tragic story about the crime and gender discrimination at the high school occurring in seemingly idyllic suburb of Glen Ridge, New Jersey. Being praised and adored by the community, four of the towns most popular high school athletes raped a seventeen-year-old retarded young girl. The brutal rape action involved a baseball bat and a broomstick. The main concern of the author is how come such a brutal rape and atrocious action could be done by popular and publicly admired young athletes grown and studied in prosperous and tranquil town. What was worse is that additional young men were involved in the crime by watching the scene while four athletes were committing a rape. That is why, by starting the story from the rape of a mentally handicapped Leslie Faber, the author goes on in researching and analyzing the Glen Ridge community itself, its environment and citizens that all together eventually led to the crime, including indifference toward certain issues by the school administration, lack of female school leaders, dominance of males over females among students, dishonest and unrespectable attitude toward female students, silence of other kids concerning the committed crime, and other issues.

To understand the reasons and circumstances of the crime, it might be necessary to analyze the life habits and atmosphere at Glen Ridge among both students and their adult parents. To do so, the following three topics will be considered (a) masculinity and violence, (b) parents idealization of their children and negligence of their bad actions, and (c) women in peer violence.

Theme One Masculinity and Violence
Since masculinity, stereotyping, racial and gender discrimination have long been the central objects and concerns of the American society, they often threaten the values and viability of the communities. The connection between societal models of masculinity measured by the gender-role conflict scale and violence of men has been largely researched and analyzed by numerous theorists, philosophers and writers. The main issue of masculinity is to give people examples of appropriate behaviors within the society, including possible models for interpersonal interaction. Human behavior can be changed if it is necessary to promote and support the new model or virtue among societys members (Renzetti and Goodstein, 2007). Though, in some societies as Glen Ridge the model of masculinity was closely related to violence. The popular school athletes are a vivid example of such perception they did not have any respect toward the school authorities and their behavior toward other students, especially girls, was unrespectable, rude, violent, offensive and discriminative. By investigating and analyzing the case of Leslie Fabers rape, Bernard Lefkowitz found out that all seven guys involved in the crime - Kyle and Kevin Scherzer, Paul and Chris Archer, Bryant Grober, Peter Quigley, and Richard Corcoran  were raised up by some of the towns most-respected families. Later they became the best and most popular athletes at their school to be idolized by peers and be pride for parents, teachers, and the whole town, which eventually led to the realization that whatever they do or say, it will always be accepted by others. Even if actions are rude and impolite toward other students, especially girls, there is no opposition from the students and there is no punishment from the teachers and parents.

Violence in the male characters can be depicted as natural, as a perversion of nature or as social prescription or other cases it can be combination of all of that.  Such characteristics can be affected by the social context and the persons ability to be affected by such social variables. Myths of masculinity conceptualizing how to be a man are closely related with the ability to make hush decisions, even if they are directed against mans classmates and other students in the school. Violence starts playing an important role when male needs to protect his status, power and influence over others as school athletes usually did to prove the power of their jock clique. Under such influence people stop controlling themselves and can apply violent actions toward others. Such people often suffer from the complex with never-ending striving for one-upmanship with other men. Such situation certainly causes disappointment, anger and violent behavior as a result. According to the psychoanalytic framework, the resolution of such Oedipus complex is the cornerstone upon which the mans sense of masculinity is built. By analyzing more deeply the Glen Ridge community Lefkowitz realized the main reason of such masculinity and discriminative attitude and behavior toward female students. Glen Ridge was the community managed and controlled by males while females were perceived only as wives and mothers whose main responsibility is to sit at home and to make life of their husbands and sons happy. Being raised in the society where women do not have any influence and power whether at home or in the school administration, jocks grew up confident in the male dominance and female subordination and obeying. That is why, gender discrimination and sexual harassment of female students were perceived as normal actions while young girls allowed such behavior by being afraid to refuse and willing to be accepted by those popular guys. Feeling of the complete power over others led to the extreme peer pressure at the school. Having a combination of mixed feelings toward athletes - admiring of and fear toward them  students accepted, admired and followed all the rules and actions of the jocks. Girls being referred as little mothers and pigs were treated as sexual objects with disrespect and were often involved in the acts of voyeurism. Moreover, many of those girls voluntarily agreed to make a train or other acts of group sex with the members of jock clique in order to be accepted to this elite group. Some of them were even proud to be named trained seals (Lefkowitz, p. 147). In such a way, such students are as much to blame as anything else that led up to violent behavior of the jocks since with the lack of any complaint from others as the boys got older the more deviant and violent they became.

Theme Two Parents Idealization of their Children and Negligence of their Bad Actions
Nowadays family structures and dynamics experienced remarkable changes, including shift from extended to nuclear families, smaller household sizes, increase of divorces, appearance of new forms of relations like living-apart-together, intergenerational relations and so on. All these family changes directly or indirectly influence the children, their behavior and adaptability skills within the society. Adolescent delinquency and later adult offending have been proved to be the main reasons for the increased problematic behavior among young children whose anti-social behavior took roots in the early childhood and later under the various negative influences led to more criminal consequences. The early childhood years are the most promising when positive family and community interaction could significantly reduce the difficult behavior among children, especially boys. However, parents at Glen Ridge seem to be blind and idealistic toward the behavior of their children. The persistent oppositional behavior of young boys, their conduct problems and physical aggression in the early primary school and high school years were neglected, though usually should be the strongest predictors for the future anti-social behavior and negative long-term outcomes (Chesney-Lind and Pasko, 2003). When the boys caused problems, destruction or resorted to delinquency, they knew their parents would solve all the problems by paying money, hiding information from the media or preventing any law suits to keep low profile. While being respected and holding good positions in the community parents of those jocks could not and were even unwilling to believe that their children could be involved in any sort of problems or illegal actions. Situation with Kevin Scherzer is a vivid example when his parents simply denied the existence of their sons problems and eventually dismissed the situation. In such a way, parents of Glen Ridges jocks played a major role in their sons delinquency by ignoring and hiding the brutal and illegal behavior of their children.

Blindness of parents toward their children picked in the case of Leslie Fabers rape when parents would agree to blame anyone else but not their own children. They went on to accuse the mentally handicapped Leslie as being involved in the sexual act voluntarily seeking the favoritism of our guys and acceptance to their elite group. The defense even portrayed Leslie as a Lolita (Lefkowitz, p. 362) and that it was rather hard for sixteen year-old boys to withstand the overt female sexuality (Lefkowitz , p. 212). However, how the defense can explain the use of a baseball bat and a broomstick as tools for raping Is it not a vivid proof of the violent nature and behavior of the athletes whatever the reasons they had to have sexual intercourse with mentally handicapped girl    

Theme Three Women in Peer Violence
Domestic and peer violence against women is one of the crucial issues that had caused a lot of argues due to numerous social and economic factors. Such violence usually occurs when the women experience violence from their family member, partner or peers attempts to physically or psychologically dominate. It frequently refers to violence between spouses or peer abuse, but it may also include cohabitants and non-married intimate partners. The domestic and peer violence against women obtains many forms and types, such as physical violence, emotional abuse, intimidation, sexual abuse, economic lack or threats of violence (Chesney-Lind and Pasko, 2003). In some cases, these violence manners can physically assault such as hitting, pushing, shoving, etc. On the contrary, the emotional, psychological and financial abuse cannot be considered as a criminal manner, but as a type of criminal violence.

While investigating the case of rape of Leslie, Lefkowitz stressed the readers attention on the state-wide existence of the problem when young female students are discriminated, abused and raped by their male peers, which is often not reported to the school administration and the police. It is mainly caused by the peer pressure and fear of even worse consequences if the truth becomes public. Many female victims are afraid to tell their stories to others since even more severe violence can follow from their peers in the school. Thus, school administration and the police are sometimes limited in facts of peer violence to make any actions, though it is largely reported that police is not supportive as it should be.

Conclusion
The use of peer violence against young female students has been criticized not only on humanitarian and moral grounds. It can be summarized that violence and abuse affect all kinds of people every day whatever the culture, race, or society the person is from. Most of the conventions and rules are against women violence and try to protect their rights and assist those who suffered (Renzetti and Goodstein, 2007). However, peer violence against women continues to be a crucial problem in many societies and high schools due to lack of rules or conventions, awareness and specific education. The only way to break the chain of peer violence is to educate not only the victims, but the perpetrators and the community at large by teaching young women to stand in their power and young men to gain their power from within.