(Continued)

By Katherine Ramsland

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Dominance & Aggression

Often, these girls are excused due to their youth and immaturity. It's easy for them to get caught up in romantic fantasies and look to "dominant" males like Ludwig and Ferrell, who brag that they're so tough they could kill someone and get away with it. And there's a cultural factor as well: girls are encouraged these days to accept and even utilize violence to make their lives better.

In our society, young females are routinely regarded as "less criminal" than young males and their crimes less serious. We have a sense that females are the nurturers and males the combatants. This becomes a stereotype as well as an expectation. Yet studies show that female crime patterns have become similar to those for males, and there's evidence that aggressive female crimes are increasing. The FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System indicates that one in four juvenile arrests involves a female, and their arrest rate since 1987 has risen and even surpassed the rate for males.

Aggression is a good barometer of social values, which are expressed all around us. A clothing commercial features a woman "dressed to kill" who slugs and kicks five muscular men. Ads for the military-like Hummer tell women who drive them that they can now "threaten men in a whole new way." If messages aimed at girls show that violence is not only acceptable but key to self-esteem, they may learn to prefer violent peers as companions. Indeed, females attracted to convicted felons indicate that they feel more protected by a man able to dominate others.

Aggressive images in film, on television and on the Internet prime aggressive thoughts. One study indicates that children who strongly identify with aggressive characters are more likely to solve problems aggressively. It's no wonder, then, that some girls become enamored of boys capable of violence, even to the point of imagining themselves the wife of their parents' killer.

Kara has not yet had her say, but we do know that Heather Wendorf abandoned her alleged fantasies once she saw the real thing. Caril Ann Fugate, too, insisted that she had been horrified by Starkweather, although her behavior indicated that she'd been easily persuaded to remain with him.

It's not easy to decide just how culpable a fourteen-year-old girl is in the midst of such a brutal incident, but we do at least know that Kara had some idea what she was doing when she got into the car to drive off with Ludwig. She was in love, possibly obsessed, and she no doubt viewed him as a romantic rescuer. Such infatuations can be a form of temporary madness, but in the days to come her actual role will likely be clarified.

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