Teen mum-to-be finds partner hanged...Are Teenage Mums Blamed For Violence?

Jan 9 2008 by Ben Glaze, South Wales Echo

A TEENAGE dad-to-be has been found hanged just three months before the birth of his baby daughter.

The body of 17-year-old Paul Briggs, known as “Briggsy”, was discovered by his pregnant girlfriend Kyra Applin in her bedroom.

Kyra, 15, who is due to give birth in April, said today: “He was so happy looking at the scan picture, he couldn’t wait for our baby to be born.”

Police are not treating Paul’s death at Kyra’s home in Ferndale, Rhondda, in the early hours of Sunday morning as suspicious.

Today, she spoke of the young couple’s joy when they learned she was pregnant in July, three months after they began seeing each other.

Kyra said: “We were both really looking forward to it. We found out on December 19 that I was having a girl when I had a scan at Llwynypia Hospital.

“We held hands, we were both really excited. We even talked about names. I liked Michaela but Briggsy wanted Mia, so now I’m going to call her Mia.”

Doctors have given Kyra, who goes to a school for expectant mothers in Rhydyfelin, Pontypridd, two possible due dates, one of which is April 17 – the day before Paul would have turned 18.

“I’m hoping she comes on Paul’s birthday, that would be nice,” said Kyra.

Paul, a Liverpool FC fan, lived with his grandparents Tom and Patricia Jones in Ynyshir, Rhondda, while his mum Angela El-Masri lives on Anglesey.

Angela, who has two other sons, Karl, 24, and Pip, 14, said Paul was a loving, affectionate son who was excited about the pregnancy.

“He said to me, ‘I can’t wait mam, I could see the baby’s heart beating on the monitor’,” she told the Echo.

“Paul was a mammy’s boy who would tell me he loved me in a room full of people. The last words he said to me were, ‘Mam, I love you’.”

Angela, 45, learned of her middle son’s death in a harrowing phone call on Sunday.

She said: “I couldn’t stop screaming, it was as if Hiroshima had happened in my heart or somebody had stuck a dagger in my chest.

“I couldn’t take in what I was hearing, I was on my knees rocking back and forth. I was inconsolable.”

Angela believes Paul hanged himself accidentally and never meant to kill himself. She added: “He had everything to live for. Can you count how many stars there are in the sky? That’s how much I’m going to miss him.”

Paul’s best friend Nathan Applin, 17, said: “He was lovely, one of the nicest boys you could meet and he had a heart of gold.

“We used to play football together, just chilling out. He wouldn’t have done this on purpose, it was an accident. He was so chuffed about the baby, he was bouncing everyday and he loves his girl to bits.”

Paul’s grandfather Tom, 78, said his grandson’s death and had affected so many people and left a community in mourning.

“He was so full of life and would do anything for anybody. My wife and I brought him up as our own. He was a lovely boy,” he said.

A post-mortem examination was yesterday carried out at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital, Llantrisant.

Paul’s funeral will be held on Tuesday at 12.15pm at Bethany Chapel, Ynyshir.

BBC NEWS

As calls are made for sex education to be compulsory in all schools Kizzy Neal, 15, is one teenager with a lot on her plate - exams, boyfriends and looking after her seven-month-old son.
She was in her best friend's bedroom when she found out she was pregnant, in the summer of 2006. She was 13.

"I didn't stop crying for three weeks and I was really, really scared," says Kizzy, who is now 15. "I knew I'd done something wrong. Thirteen is not the ideal age to have a baby."

She had been fearful after having sex for the first time, unprotected, with Louie.

"Since I got pregnant, I've learnt so much about contraception, abortions and sex but at school I think I had so few sex education lessons."

While the father of her child rejected being a dad and moved away from Torbay in Devon, Kizzy never considered having her pregnancy terminated.




Kizzy: Mum at 14
As it went on, she became the target of abuse from people. She was spat at and her brothers were attacked because, her father Kevin believes, she chose not to have an abortion.

She lost friends because of her pregnancy, but the girls who had abused her changed their behaviour after she had baby Kaylib in May.

"When I was pregnant it was like 'You little so-and-so' but when I had the baby they were round the pram saying: 'Isn't he beautiful?'

"It was a bit two-faced. Without a baby I didn't want to go out of the house and I was scared, but as soon as I had the baby, the people I was scared of were coming up, being really nice to me."

The birth itself, in May, was the best moment of her life, she says.

"When they put him on my chest, I was so overwhelmed, you don't know whether to smile or cry or laugh or scream, you don't know what to do. It gives you a warm feeling in your tummy."

Sacrifices

From that moment on, says Kizzy's mother Kerry, who is in her 40s, the atmosphere changed. "There was so much negativity about Kizzy having the baby in the first place, then when he was born there was so much joy and excitement and everyone loves him."

Kizzy returned to college in September, leaving her mother to look after Kaylib while she studies for six GCSEs. She wants to be a member of Parliament but if that doesn't happen, to be an occupational therapist.

But although Kizzy may look like any other student in the classroom, she is constantly reminded of her responsibilities as a parent because of the sacrifices she has to make and what she describes as her lost childhood.

"I miss being able to get up and go out when I want to and doing teenage things. I can't do these things as much anymore but I do get help from mum and dad so I get the chance to be a child as well as a mum."

It's hard to let go of your childhood

Kizzy Neal

She has made a programme with BBC Three about her experience to show other teenage girls that motherhood is "not all about cute babies, it's hard work.

"It's hard to let go of your childhood, you have to break away from that, you have grow up really fast, you have to mature quickly. It's hard getting to grips with being a mum and how to look after your child the best you can."

It's even harder without a father, and earlier this year Kizzy took Kaylib to Southend to meet his dad. On her way home, it struck Kizzy that the two probably wouldn't meet again.

"I was thinking about the baby growing up without a dad and thought I'd let him down. It's ideal to have a mum and a dad and to have a proper environment but it's very different for me. He's got as much love as he needs, even without a dad."

Giving out condoms

Kizzy's story is not uncommon in the UK, which has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in western Europe.

There were 46,215 girls under 18 who became pregnant in 2005, according to the Family Planning Association.

On average four out of 10 pregnant girls have the baby. But the teen conception rate is falling and sexual education is working, says Brook sexual health charity's chief executive Simon Blake.


Kizzy's parents help look after Kaylib
"It is reducing. We've got a teenage pregnancy strategy that is working. Good quality sexual education and access to services is a real part of the solution."

Last week, campaigners called for sex and relationships education to be made compulsory in all schools. The Terrence Higgins Trust, the NSPCC and the National Union of Teachers said no schools should be able to "opt out of delivering good sex and relationships education to their pupils".

Kizzy believes her school takes the wrong approach by too readily giving out condoms and "promoting sex".


It is claimed 11 other girls at the school also became pregnant, which the school strongly denies.

The school says it devotes considerable resources to sex education and says part of its message is to teach youngsters to delay having sex until in a stable, loving relationship. It also has a confidential drop-in centre called Tic Tac that offers advice on sexual health, abortion and contraception.

Tic Tac has been held up by the government as a model of good practice but Kizzy's father Kevin believes its work undermines a parent's efforts to instil abstinence in a child. His daughter accepts it was her mistake but her fears that having Kaylib meant the "end of fun" have not been realised.

"Every day that goes by," she says, "there's something he does that makes me laugh."

The Observer: Violence blamed on teenage mums

Study claims that immature young parents with poor discipline techniques are creating aggressive children
Mark Townsend
The Observer, Sunday October 16 2005 Article history
Britain's high rate of teenage pregnancies is a principal factor in the cause of violent crime, according to a controversial report by a leading criminologist.

Speaking before the launch of one of the largest ever studies into violence, its author George Hosking said that parents under 16 were contributing to 'a cycle' of aggression that meant people were 25 times more likely to be a victim of violence than 50 years ago. His comments were denounced by many as demonising young parents.

Hosking referred to evidence that a person's propensity to violence is determined by the age of three. He said that teenage parents can lack 'emotional maturity' and misjudged attempts at discipline could lead to their children developing violent tendencies. A strong, healthy relationship between parents and babies is vital to reducing aggression, he said.

'More and more children are being born to younger parents who have no reference to draw on in how to handle a baby,' said Hosking, a clinical criminologist and chief executive of the Wave Trust, a charity dedicated to tackling the root causes of violence and which this week will unveil its nine-year study into the issue.

He added: 'Lower emotional maturity, lower emotional reserves and experience or maturity that people can draw on as parents play a role. People treated particularly badly under the age of three were more likely to go on and abuse as adults. Early intervention is required to stop a cycle of violence from developing.'

Despite government attempts to tackle teenage pregnancies, Britain still has one of the highest rates in Europe. Latest figures reveal that the rate of under-16-year-old pregnancies in England and Wales has increased.

Although Hosking said he wanted to avoid being seen as critical of parents, his views will be interpreted by some as yet another attack on teenage mothers and fathers.

Catherine Evans of the Brook Centre said: 'There is a real risk of demonising teenage parents who are doing their very best for their children. They need support rather than being undermined or criticised. Teenage parents themselves are likely to have fewer educational opportunities and that is likely to have a knock-on effect on the outcomes of their children, but I am not aware of any evidence on the effects of teenage pregnancies.'

However Norman Wells, director of Family and Youth Concern, a research group that looks into the causes of family breakdown, said: 'It certainly could be a factor. It shows the importance of addressing the high rates of out-of-wedlock teenage pregnancies that we have in this country.'

The Wave Trust report, which analysed scores of academic studies into the causes of violence, claims that people are 25 times more likely to be a victim of violent crime now compared to the Fifties. Based on official police statistics, the study calculated that in 1950 there were 47 violent offences per thousand people compared to 1,158 for 2003/2004.

Hosking, who is 61, added: 'When I was walking around in the Fifties compared with walking around now we are looking at levels of risk and violence way beyond what was present at that time.

'Comparisons are now being made using the Nineties as a yardstick, yet violence then was many, many times higher than in the Fifties. We should be looking to that decade for a normal, acceptable level of violence,' said Hosking.

The increasing risk of violence contradict the findings of the British Crime Survey, which indicates that violent crime is going down. A spokesperson at the Home Office would not comment without having seen the methodology used by the Wave Trust.

However, he said: 'The British Crime Survey is regarded internationally as the most reliable measure of trends of crime. It shows violent crime is actually falling and has reached its lowest point since 1981.'

Critical Research

For my critical research i have came to a decision that I will be doing a critical research study surrounding the issue of 'Children and the Media'. I am mostly interested in finding out the answer and reasons to why teenage mums are presented so negatively within the media. However there is a likely chance that I might choose to look into the issue of how violence is blamed on teenage mums through poor upbringing. I am planning to evaluate the different stereotypes of teenage mums that are being portrayed through the media and how most teenage mum are blamed for the society not functioning right due to the poor upbringing of the next generation. I want to look into documentaries and focus on how the teenage mums challenge their stereotype or do they simply tend to comply with it.

Defeat Your Myspace ADDICTION

This Is How You Do It...
Admit you have a problem. This may be hard, but accepting that MySpace has taken over your life is an important step into overcoming your addiction. If you simply can't resist the urge to check your home page, then it's clear that MySpace is controlling you and not the other way around.
Stop communicating with people through MySpace and correspond with only those you know, as fellow addicts only contribute to your problem. If you don't want to cut them off completely, consider just taking the friendships that you value off of MySpace. Get their phone numbers, email addresses, AIM screen names, ICQ numbers, or any other information that may be a way of contacting them outside of MySpace.
Print out your page. You've probably personalized it and tweaked it to reflect your personality. In a way, it's a work of art that you created. You don't want it to be lost forever, so save a copy in print. Having a hard copy will make it easier to let go of your profile online.
Start deleting all of the images, comment boxes, background settings, songs, videos, and anything else you put on the page that didn't come with it. Make it into a plain MySpace profile, like it was when you started it. End all blog subscriptions that you have signed up for. Turn off all email notifications.
Post several bulletins announcing that you will be no longer available on MySpace. Delete your main pictures, blog, comments, friends, etc. If your profile is set to private, set it back to normal. Reset the information about yourself.
Change the headline to "No Longer Available" or some other indicator that you no longer use MySpace. Stop using MySpace. Get an e-mail filter and set it to block MySpace, Facebook, or any other similar sites.
Find other creative activities to do. Try to find activities that both amuse you in the short-term and benefit you in the long-term. MySpace only provides a short-term pleasure (usually). Keep in contact with your friends through phone, e-mail, or messenger! Not talking to them may make you want to return to MySpace. After waiting a good month and re-establishing your life, go back and delete your MySpace. It shouldn't, at this point, rip your heart out to do so. Never go back to MySpace, as it will possibly trigger a relapse into the addiction again.
Take a cold shower. And find a relaxing thing to do, eg. take a nap
Return to your wonderful life of impelling arcane and affinity.



TIPS
People who hardly know you may not want to give you personal information and may feel uncomfortable interacting with you outside of MySpace.
Find other activities to do with your time. Learn to program, write a book, etc.
If MySpace is your homepage, change it to another informational homepage such as Google, wikiHow, Yahoo, etc.
If your real-life friends and family members use MySpace, inform them that you're trying to stay away from it, and ask that they don't sign on when you're around.
It may be really hard to keep in touch with some people, especially if they are MySpace addicts. If you want to talk to them outside of MySpace, but they don't sign onto AIM or you feel awkward calling them, you may want to try weaning them off MySpace as well. Remember, real friends don't let friends be MySpace addicts.
If you're like most people, MySpace will lose its appeal after a few weeks of steady or perhaps heavy use. Eventually the grandness will fade away and you will get sick of playing the waiting game for your friends to respond to your over-simplistic comments or messages. If you're like me, nothing beats simply picking up the phone and calling your friends to see how they're doing. Eventually, not only will you have no interests in signing on to MySpace, you will have no need to.
Change your password by closing your eyes and randomly typing. This may require you to copy and paste to confirm your new password. Just be diligent in not peeking or writing this down.
Think about all the time you wasted on MySpace and how it could have been spent wisely elsewhere.
One alternative method is to use a less addictive social networking site, such as xanga or livejournal, and posting there, but not actively seeking out friends.
Another alternative is to just cancel/delete your current myspace account.

The BIG Success With Myspace

In little more than a couple of years MySpace.com has gone from zero to being a top five website which no self-respecting US teenager can ignore. Now, it's gaining ground in Britain.

As any creative thinker knows the best ideas are always the most obvious. The rise of MySpace.com from nowhere to almost the top of the internet tree in just 36 months does nothing to change that maxim.

MySpace is simplicity itself - a site that enables anyone to build their own homepage for free, listing their likes, dislikes, favourite bands, top books, best movies, general interests, relationship status etc, and then hook-up with other like-minded folk.

As 25-year-old Briana Dougherty, a MySpace devotee, puts it, "it's a casual way to stay in contact without appearing weird".

When Briana, who works in the music industry, hits the town, goes to a gig or a party and meets someone interesting, they trade MySpace profiles and stay in contact.



It's a central meeting point to stay in contact with friends all the time
MySpace user Briana Dougherty
Asking for someone's e-mail address can be "creepy", says Briana, who is from California and works in London, because it's "personal, one-to-one contact".

She has 224 "friends" on MySpace. Some are good friends from back home in the US, some are just people "you occasionally see around parties" and some are not actually individuals, but bands she likes.

Music, always a lively topic of conversation among the young, is a great common denominator on MySpace, and fertile ground for emerging bands - the Arctic Monkeys' owe much of their success to the site.

These days the time-honoured teenage conversational gambit "What music are you into?" will likely be met with a response along the lines of "Can I refer you to my MySpace page."

MySpace is what's known as a social networking site. It's by far the biggest, claiming about 57 million registered users, and is currently ranked the fifth most popular English language site on the net by the Alexa ratings service. Others of the same genre include Facebook, Bebo, MSN Spaces, Friendster and Yahoo 360.


The new man behind MySpace - media mogul Rupert Murdoch
All work in a similar way, offering users a host of conventional internet functions - blogging, user forums, instant messaging, personal profiles, online photo albums, visitor comment spaces - in one place.

See someone who's into the same music as you, similar films, is a compatible star sign, or you just fancy? Send them a message and if they're interested, bingo, you've made a friend. Although MySpace wouldn't confirm its UK audience, it has been cited at between two and four million. The launch of a UK-specific site is thought to be imminent.

The success of MySpace has not gone unnoticed by commercial operators who have seized on it as a handy way of targeting potential customers. For example, anyone who proclaims their interest in kite-surfing, should steel themselves for a torrent of e-mails from companies trying to sell them the latest kit.

And with millions of users, social networking sites, which make money out of advertising, are potential goldmines. MySpace was bought last year by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation for $580m (£332.85m).

But while Mr Murdoch, 75 this week, is clearly hip to the appeal of MySpace, many people even half his age will never have heard of it.


DANGERS OF NETWORKING SITES

The safety of people, particularly children and women, using MySpace is a growing concern
Rachel O'Connell, who leads the Home Office taskforce on internet safety, is anxious that pages are so easily searchable
Displaying photos of oneself helps stalkers, she says
MySpace's Chris DeWolfe says 'This isn't a MySpace issue, it's an internet issue'
"The appeal of these sites lies in the crucial part of the adolescent socialisation process which we all go through... finding your identity, voice, place and status - the tribe with which you most identify," says Jo Twist, senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research.

The ideas behind these sites are not new, says Dr Twist, but what is characterising the trend now is the "ease with which people can upload and share their own 'digital assets' - motifs that say something about who they are."

Some parents will doubtless gaze at their offspring busily cultivating friendships online - rather than in the real world - with an air of despair. But, says Dr Twist, it can be hard for them to understand because "many of us have our social networks in place".

The ease with which relationships can be forged online is changing the nature of friendship too. After all, how common is it to have upwards of 200 friends?

MySpace user Stella Sims, 26, sees a clear, but unspoken, competitive streak among users.

"It's a place to show off your personality and how many friends you have. It's a bit of statement of how popular you are," says Stella.


The site is said to have 57 million registered users
Any philosopher or psychologist will tell you that close friendships with more half-a-dozen people is not possible, says Mark Vernon, author of the Philosophy of Friendship.

MySpace friendships are more akin to "audience reach... like Richard and Judy" than traditional social reach.

"Friendship takes time to develop. The person who says they have hundreds of friends wants our compassion not our envy. The heart of friendship is wanting to know someone and be known by them. This is not the same as knowing about someone which is what you get if you never meet your online pal face to face."

Some will find the idea of setting out one's personal life to a potential audience of millions perplexing. Yet MySpace users show little sign of being intimidated by their extensive friendship networks, or indeed by the inevitable threat posed by dishonest, even predatory, users.

Despite a spate of paedophiles and stalkers targeting the site - two men were charged in the US on Tuesday with assaulting girls they met on MySpace - most users simply ignore unwanted communications, according to a recent academic study in the US.

Perhaps the biggest headache anyone with a couple of hundred mates needs to get their head around is how to manage their Christmas card list.

Social Networking

While the influence of social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace on firms’ sales and marketing initiatives continues to grow, some experts predict that their impact will soon be dwarfed by that of another Web 2.0 technology - ­ virtual worlds.

Online virtual worlds geared towards entertainment are commonplace nowadays, the
best known being Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, MindArk’s Entropia Universe and Linden Labs Second Life. Users are immersed in an online three-dimensional interactive environment where their characters ­ - usually known as avatars ­ - can get up to just about anything. The fact that life in these virtual worlds often revolves around money, which in some cases can be converted to and from real currency in the physical world, is obviously enticing to businesses.

Ways in which enterprises might use virtual worlds for everyday business range from setting up a virtual meeting place to aid employee collaboration, to a business-to-consumer model where firms maintain a virtual store selling items that are delivered in the real world.

Quocirca principal analyst Fran Howarth is a firm believer in the promise that virtual worlds hold for enterprises. “These worlds have huge potential in terms of the ability to build brand awareness and do PR in the web site’s community and, in some cases, to sell or advertise products to potential customers,” she said.

Topics under discussion at the recent Virtual Worlds 2008 conference in New York reflected the growing interest enterprises are showing in virtual worlds. For example, the theme of one of the best-attended sessions was the need for virtual world developers to focus more on promoting the business benefits of their technology.

Gartner fellow and vice president Steve Prentice believes the past six months have seen a surge in interest from enterprises wishing to explore the potential of
virtual environments.

However, Prentice added that companies are wary of various complications, such as identity management, and reliability and scalability issues that have plagued public virtual worlds such as Second Life. There is also the risk of brand damage if anything should go awry, as well as the ever-present security issues.

One of the major worries is the risk of security flaws that might expose business-critical information. These are not restricted to virtual worlds, of course, but apply to many other publicly accessible social network sites.

“Having employees access a public service such as Second Life, which is out of their control, is not very attractive to enterprises,” Prentice explained.

Quocirca’s Howarth said that enterprises were also worried about the drain on productivity that might be caused by employees spending too much time at work immersed in these sites.

“There is a range of security issues. For example, users placing too much personal information online that could be compromised, or even giving away corporate information, such as email addresses, or chatting about sensitive corporate issues,” Howarth said.

Corporations allowing employees access to these sites “must educate users and put policies in place as to what constitutes acceptable behaviour, as well as ensuring that those policies are enforced through technology, such as content filtering technologies,”she added.

David Lavenda, vice president of marketing for Web 2.0 security specialist WorkLight, said most enterprises are likely to remain wary of virtual worlds for some time to come.

“I think companies have a problem about adopting things that they don’t necessarily buy or deploy or fully control. It’s a cultural change, and it’s been brought on by things like Google Apps, Salesforce.com and SaaS products,” Lavenda said.

However, Web 2.0 advances have a habit of riding roughshod over such pragmatic concerns about issues such as control. To illustrate this point, Lavenda recalled a recent security forum his firm held in London, where a chief finance officer from a large bank commented, “We don’t allow employees to use Facebook at work, but I don’t want to be the guy holding his finger in the dam, because at some point this is going to overtake us. We have to find a way to allow people to use these tools, because they are going to find a way to use it whether we block it or not.”

One of the more prominent announcements at the Virtual Worlds 2008 conference was the partnership between IBM and Linden Labs, creator of Second Life, who demonstrated how some portions of the virtual environment could be hosted behind a firewall on IBM blade servers. This arrangement has the potential to allay some control and security concerns.

Anyone looking to incorporate virtual world technology into their business strategy should tread cautiously, according to Prentice. “I am firmly of the belief that virtual worlds are a great technology for enterprises, but my attitude is that initially they ought to consider it as an internal tool, before they start worrying about opening it up to the external world,” he said.

As an example, IBM plans to pilot its solution internally, allowing its employees to explore the main Second Life environment and cross the firewall into IBM’s custom-built world without having to log on and off.

An alternative, according to Prentice, is for businesses to create their own small-scale virtual worlds, instead of joining a large-scale public one.

“This could be something like Sun’s Project Wonderland, which is a Java-based set of engines and technology to allow you to build what I would describe as an avatar-enabled collaboration environment,” he said, adding that all firms really needed to get started is a few virtual conference rooms and perhaps a presentation theatre.

Enterprises, however, need to install a system that can be relied on, which IBM could offer. “There’s no doubt that IBM can deliver a stable, 24x7 platform, that is scalable and keeps running ­ that’s their bread and butter,” Prentice said.