By PAUL BRACCHI

Last updated at 23:48 16 May 2008

The girl emerged from her house with a mobile phone glued to her ear and a cigarette hanging out of her mouth.

Her friends take the mickey out of her, we learn from her sister's MySpace internet page, because she is never out of "a chav T-shirt and tracksuit bottoms" - and she didn't disappoint yesterday.

Even so, it doesn't pay to get on the wrong side of this 14-year-old, who plays for a local girls' football team and weighs in at around 13 stone.

Scroll down for more...

Wild: A teenage member of a girl gang

Someone who did is retired school teacher Beryl Barber.

The pensioner was walking along the pavement near her home in Selby, North Yorkshire, recently when she was confronted by the girl in question and her "mates".

The gang (three girls, two boys) fancied the odds: five of them versus one defenceless 72-year-old woman.

They began hurling stones at Mrs Barber. She could have turned away, and many in her position would have done. Instead, however, she picked up one of the stones and threw it back.

The retaliation was swift and sadistic.

Suddenly, the girl rushed towards Mrs Barber and pushed her into the path of an oncoming car which had to brake sharply to avoid a collision.

Nevertheless, Mrs Barber fell with such force that, in the words of an eye-witness, "her face literally bounced off the pavement, skidding across the tarmac."

Mrs Barber suffered a broken nose and two black eyes, and was left looking like the girl had played football-with her head.

The girl's motive, according to the police, was to make her "look good" in front of her group; to gain "respect".

It is a word that features prominently in the street lingo of such youngsters, and never was it more misplaced.

The girl, the second of three children who lives with her parents on the outskirts of Selby, was given a 12-month referral order when she appeared before magistrates in March; the equivalent, many might think, of a "slap on the wrist".

Under the terms of the order she has to attend a course in anger management.

That is as much as we are allowed to tell you about her, because in the eyes of the law she is still a juvenile.

Mrs Barber, for her part, was too scared to come to the door when we called at her bungalow.

This is the reality behind a Home Office report this week which revealed that crimes committed by girls as young as ten have soared by 25 per cent in three years.

The statistics mask an even more disturbing trend.

Many of these feral females are involved in gangs.

Be they all-girl gangs, mixed gangs (like the one which targeted Beryl Barber) or male gangs to which they become attached.

Sometimes beneath a cap or a "hoodie" it is hard to tell one sex from another any more - girl from boy, or boy from girl.

Either way, in this Clockwork Orange world, pushing a pensioner into a road, or mugging an innocent passer-by, earns you respect.

Two further incidents in the past few weeks alone highlight the frightening escalation of the kind of female gang violence which, until recently, was presented as an intrinsically male problem.

One was at Shoreham railway station, near Brighton, when about 20 girls - from two rival gangs - fought a pitched battle on the platform with beer bottles and snooker balls wrapped in socks. Two girls, aged 18 and 20, have been charged with affray.

The other occurred in the Midlands, where a woman was mercilessly punched, kicked, and stamped on by a mob of teenage girls who, she says, acted "like a pack of wild animals".

You do not have to grow up on a sink estate, come from a broken home, get excluded from school, be promiscuous, binge drink or play violent computer games to become immersed in this culture.

But - boy or girl - this is more likely if you do.

The most recent Metropolitan Police estimate put the number of gangs in London at 174, of which at least three were exclusively girls.

But the report concedes: "The actual number could be even greater as this is based purely on police intelligence."

Among the girl "crews" believed to operating in the capital today are the "Shower Gyals" (Tottenham), PYG (Peckham), identified by black bandanas, and OCS (Brixton), which is said to have members as young as ten.

Last year, a running feud between the PYG and OCS turned into a mass brawl in Camberwell, South London.

Such girls, according to a study to be published by the Centre for Policy Studies next month, routinely carry knives and "are prepared to use them".

Initiation rites might require a girl to rob or mug.

Casual sex ("linking") is endemic and videos of girls and boys having sex in the stairwells of housing blocks circulate school playgrounds.

London, where the research was conducted, is the norm, not the exception.

In Nottingham there is the NG2 Crew, for example, an all-girl gang named after the postcode which includes the notorious Meadows estate, a crime-ridden warren of dimly-lit council houses.

Becki, 16, lives with her mother - her father has long since gone - in the area.

Many of her peers come from the Meadows. Her brother is a drug dealer, selling "skunk" cannabis.

Becki is member of the NG2.

"I have been part of the crew for six months now," she said last night.

"It's like a type of protection. My mum works all the time [in a supermarket] so I hardly ever see her and there is no one at home, so I don't feel I have anyone looking after me really.

Scroll down for more...

"I started hanging out with the girls from school and we just decided to form a crew."

It sounds innocent enough until Becki admits: "It gets serious when arguments start. One of our girls had a "beef" with another girl from a different area and when that happened we had to protect her and help her to sort it out.

"We went round and beat the other girl up.

We punched her and we also took off our shoes and hit her with them. It was like a warning really that they should not mess with us.

"A lot of rows are over boys, or it's name-calling and girls showing us disrespect.

"We stand up for one another. It's like having a big family. You feel safe. You can go anywhere as long as your girls are with you."

What's clear is that there has been a dramatic coarsening in the behaviour of an entire underclass of young women - driven partly by the destruction of the nuclear family and the lack of a strong father figure, but also by a celebrity culture in which female so-called "stars" - famous only for appearing on Big Brother or its equivalents - are photographed blind drunk and fighting in the gutter with other women outside nightclubs.

For some young girls, joining a male gang is their way of trying to feel cool, desirable and protected.

The price for such protection - and the material rewards of membership - are high.

Such girls are known as "bitches".

"In Leeds, every postcode and every little area has its own crew," says Pat Regan, who runs a Mothers Against Violence group in the city.

"There's the Hyde Park Crew, the Little London Crew, and the CPT from Chapeltown. All these gangs have girls in them.

"They see the boys in nice clothes and driving flash cars and they want a part of it.

"But nothing is free. The girls often have to keep guns and drugs for their so-called boyfriends, who will usually have several girls on the go, and they end up with the convictions when they are caught."

Violence, in one way or another, defines these girls. The underlying evidence, if anyone cared to look, has been there for some time.

The most common age of a female criminal - calculated from the average age of juvenile females convicted in the courts - has fallen to just 14.

In the early Nineties, the age was 16.

Equally disturbing is the shift towards thuggery.

The figures released by the Youth Justice Board on Thursday, as the Mail reported yesterday, show significant increases in assaults, robberies and public order offences.

It was 8pm on a sunny April evening when Wendy Clarke, a 47-year-old mother from the Birmingham suburbs, got caught up in this nightmare world. She had just locked up her tanning salon when she spotted a group of about 20 girls congregating near a bus shelter.

Four of the gang - although she didn't know they were a gang at the time - were sitting near an elderly man on a bench. "They began taunting him," says Wendy.

"Grandad", they called him. One of the girls then opened his jacket and started rummaging through his pockets.

"Soon they were all over him like a pack of animals and I knew I had to do something."

She strode over to the group and told them to "back off and leave him alone".

Almost before the words had left her mouth, one of the girls yanked her by the hair and punched her in the face. Two others jumped on her back.

Three more joined in and jumped on Wendy's head when she fell to the ground.

"One minute I was telling them to leave the man alone and the next I was on the floor," she says.

"During the attack I was aware of more and more girls joining in. I tried my best to defend myself, but it was useless. I was completely and utterly helpless.

"All the time they were shouting abuse and baying like savages. It was absolutely terrifying and I thought it would never end."

Wendy might not have got out alive if a couple hadn't pulled up in their car and run over to help when they realised what was happening, causing Wendy's attackers to flee.

It would be mistake to think this was a spontaneous, random attack. True, the girls did not know who their victim was going to be, but they knew they were going to get someone.

They were wearing several layers of clothing so they could change their appearance quickly. Unfortunately for them, someone followed them to a nearby McDonald's and dialled 999. The girls were in the process of "undressing" when officers arrived.

Ten girls, aged between 14 and 17, were later arrested and bailed in connection with the attack on Wendy.

Her injuries were so severe that doctors couldn't be certain whether her nose had been broken until the swelling had gone down.

"My boyfriend didn't recognise me when he saw me," she said.

"I have a 15-year-old daughter and the difference between her and "them'' is difficult to comprehend."

Consider, too, the harrowing experience of an 18-year-old youth, whom we shall call Ben, who agreed to meet us in a park in Woolwich, South-East London this week.

Ben went to live with foster parents following a deeply troubled upbringing (his father committed suicide) which has left him with severe emotional problems.

He is also partially disabled after injuring his legs in a motorbike accident.

All in all, it would be difficult to find a more vulnerable teenager.

Ben, who is slightly built, was walking down the street, near the spot where he is now standing, one day last year when he was ambushed by a gang of five girls.

The girls supplied cannabis to Ben's cousin. When his cousin left a drug debt unpaid, they took revenge on Ben instead.

The group, aged 15 and 16, dragged him into a nearby flat where they stripped him, repeatedly beat him with a broken broom handle, and made him perform sex acts.

They filmed his three-and-a-half hour ordeal on a mobile phone.

"I did not fight back because they were at least five of them and they were stronger than me. I pleaded with them to stop but they wouldn't. I just covered my face."

Initially, Ben was too embarrassed to go to the police. "They were girls, after all," he said.

Had his sister not eventually persuaded him to inform the authorities, his story would have been difficult to believe. He gave evidence against the gang via video link because he was too embarrassed to face them in court.

The girls were convicted for false imprisonment, assault, and causing a person to engage in sexual activity without consent. They were jailed for a total of nine years at Inner London Crown Court.

The judge called the attack "sadistic" and "disgraceful".

The background of the girls, who again cannot be identified, provides chilling insight into the culture of female violence and girl gangs.

One had a previous conviction for assault. When she was just 13 she punched another girl in the face, fracturing her cheekbone, leaving her needing a metal plate.

She was skilled in martial arts and her CV included robbery and threatening and abusive behaviour. Two of her accomplices also had previous convictions for crimes including robbery, assault, and drug offences.

These are the kind of nihilistic, violent crimes, of course, that we used to associate with men not women, boys not girls.

The truth is there is little difference any more - which is perhaps the most shocking indictment of all.