She wears a ring on her right index finger and an electronic bracelet on her left ankle. There are Nike ticks on her socks, her slides and her cap, which she removes as she enters the court room. Her nails are bright, bright blue, the colour of Smurfs. She is 16, charged with aggravated robbery, and this is her fifth appearance at Manukau District Court.

She stands before Judge Gregory Hikaka, her hands behind her back. "You've admitted these charges," he says, speaking with warm concern. "Obviously you appreciate how serious they are. I'm sure that's been talked about at great length at the family group conference." She nods, solemn with the gravity of her situation.

It was nearly four months earlier when, on a Sunday morning, she and her girlfriends walked into the Redhill Superette in Papakura.

Anna Loren Maninder Singh was robbed by a gang of girls.

Maninder Singh was working behind the till that morning, and he was already pissed off. Singh, who is 23, was living upstairs from the store at the time, and during the night before he had woken to someone trying to break in through his window. He'd called the police but they hadn't responded.

Three girls walk in one by one and meander in front of the counter. One points to the blocks of Whittaker's chocolate lining the shelf behind Singh, and makes towards it, before abandoning the act and heading straight for the cigarette cupboard.

More girls gather by the shop door, watching on. One cradles a baby.

SUPPLIED Maninder Singh uses a hockey stick to stop others from joining the young girl loading up her shirt with cigarette cartons.

Singh acts quickly, pushing her away, but it takes him longer to process what is happening. These are children, he thinks. Little girls. They're so brazen. Why would they want cigarettes? He thinks of his own safety, but the absurdity of the situation overrides that.

By now the girl is loading cigarette cartons into her top. Singh grabs the hockey stick stashed under the counter and pulls it back, threatening to swing, but all of his natural instincts are telling him it's wrong to hit a child – especially a girl. "In our culture we respect the girls," says Singh. "My community would hate us to hit the girl."

So he uses the stick to create a barrier, trying to stop anyone else from joining her. By now, the girl's shirt is full of cigarette packets, so she starts tossing them to her friends on the other side of the counter. Another girl tries to tries to break into the till, but can't pull it open and gives up after a few seconds. At some stage a man has entered the store, and is now interfering, grabbing the hockey stick from Singh and, as they tussle, the girl slips past, cigarettes falling from her arms as she heads towards the door.

Supplied Maninder Singh, wearing blue, tries to defend his store as a group of young women steal cigarettes.

As they leave, three girls grab some of the candy lining the counter and throw it at Singh. One checks the pie shelf as she exits. A minute and a half after they first entered, it's over.

The girls stole about $1000 worth of cigarettes, says Indy Purewal, who runs the superette with his parents. "Mainly Pall Mall cigarettes. And they took one of the phones, an iPhone 6S. They knew what they were doing."

The Redhill Superette had been targeted by burglars in the past, but never like this, by a group of girls. They emboldened each other. They fed off the chaos they created. As far as Purewal was concerned, he'd been robbed by a gang.

BEVAN READ/stuff.co.nz Dairy staff and owners feel unsafe in their busy shop in Papatoetoe after six girls assaulted the store person and walked away with cash and cigarettes. Viewers are advised to contact police with any information.

The following week, Police announced they'd caught up with the girls. Two were referred to Youth Aid. Two were arrested, including the girl who appeared in Judge Hikaka's court last month. She was due to be sentenced on Friday*. "You make sure you stay out of trouble," Judge Hikaka told her at the hearing. "Stick with your whanau."

***

For as long as there have been gangs, women have been involved, although it took a long time before anyone paid them any critical attention. Glennis Dennehy was the first to shed light on the lives of New Zealand's female gang members, in her 2000 thesis Troubled Journeys. Dennehy herself had been married to a motorcycle gang member, and had experienced first-hand the abuse and degradation of being a woman in that position.

In gangs, Dennehy writes, women are the property of men. "Women are there to cook, to clean, to look after the children and to be at their men's beck and call." They tend to come from backgrounds of poverty and abuse, and in the absence of family support and security, they are drawn to a new family – the gang. As the abuse erodes their self-esteem, they find it harder to leave, and they learn to live by the rules of the game.

Gangs are perceived as staunchly male territory. So all-female gangs are seen as strange anomalies. At Christchurch Women's Prison in the 90s there was a very violent gang called the DFBs – Deadly F***ing Bitches – led by convicted murderer Melissa "Missy" Wepa. "The DFBs were associated with some very serious assaults on prison officers and other women," says Professor Greg Newbold, from the University of Canterbury. The group has since disbanded, and none of the experts interviewed for this feature can name a women's gang at work in New Zealand today.

Even rarer – to the point that there is no local research at all on the subject – is the girl gang. In 2000, psychologist Erin Eggleston interviewed 55 teenagers who belonged to youth gangs – all boys – and asked them their views on girls.

"Participants suggested that girls should stay home and relax; that they had no interest in girls when with the gang; and girls should not be in the youth gang scene as gangs are only meant for guys," writes Eggleston. "Those girls who did join gangs were seen as 'rootbags' who could be used and abused without respect. Gang rape was the most violent and unusual example of this".

All this is to say that young girls do not fit naturally into the narratives we have around gangs. Yet, a number of recent events involving girl gangs, like the attack on Redhill Superette, have police concerned. "What we are seeing is groups of girls who are committing much more serious crimes – what we would normal associate with boys," says Dave Glossop, the district prevention manager at Counties Manukau Police. "The sheer brutality of the attacks – images of young females kicking victims in the face of the ground – it's not something our general sensibilities associate with females."



Inspector Dave Glossop, district prevention manager at Counties Manukau Police. Photograph: Peter Meecham. Inspector Dave Glossop, district prevention manager at Counties Manukau Police. Photograph: Peter Meecham.

The groups tend to be unstructured and short-lived. Their crimes lack cohesion and proper planning, and tend to be spurred on by impulse, intoxication, a sense of swagger and entitlement. Membership is loose and ephemeral, and many girls will claim association to appear cool. "It is definitely not just a Counties Manukau problem, but we are very well represented by these groups of girls," says Glossop. He calls this type of offending "disorganised organised crime".

Glossop is shocked by their violence. "'Assault by a female' – there's a bizarre perception that's hair-pulling. The average perception is that's what it is – slapping and hair-pulling," he says. "We still don't accept we have females out there who are just as, if not more, vicious than males."

***

Nilam Patel watched the young girl open the ice cream freezer, take a bunch of Magnum ice creams in both hands, and run out of the dairy door.

Patel, who is 25, dainty and softly spoken, followed the girl out of the Hari Superette in Papatoetoe, and watched her run to the petrol station across the road, where five other girls were waiting.

It was an afternoon in early April. Patel's brother owns the store, and she had been working there for about eight months, but this was the first time she had caught a shoplifter in the act. She decided to stand in the shop's entrance, as a warning to the girls not to come back. She was alone.

In walked the gang. The leader headed behind the counter and Patel followed after her but got a rough push when she tried to stop her. "When it started, I was thinking, 'They're girls, so they can't do anything to me,'" Patel says. "That was my mistake."



Security footage captured the assault on Patel. Photograph: FACEBOOK Security footage captured the assault on Patel. Photograph: FACEBOOK

As Patel tried to grab the first girl, another in a hoodie pulled her by the hair and began punching her in the face, over and over. Patel shielded herself with her arms and crouched down, but the girl picked her up and held her with her left hand, punching her again and again with her right. Patel ducked under the counter and the girl started stomping on her, rucking her like a rugby ball. Meanwhile, the other girls had pulled the store's roller door down, broken into the Lotto till, stolen more than $500 and were looting the cigarette cupboard.

Patel doesn't remember any of this. The trauma has stripped the 45-second attack from her memory. She doesn't remember what she said, or what they said. She doesn't recall scrambling to get behind a gated door, only for the assailant to slam the door on her body over and over. Behind the door is Patel's home, where she lives with her husband. She thought she would be safe there.

Less than a week later, Patel was back at work. Now, the Hari Superette counter has wires above it like those at a bank, and there's a sturdy gate to pass should you want to go behind the counter. Patel keeps a hockey stick nearby. "If they attack, then we can attack. But if they attack with a knife, we have to use a hockey stick. We can't use a knife," she says.

Two of the girls were arrested later that month – aged 14 and 16. Patel's injuries have healed. "Mentally, still I am suffering," she says. "When I see people like that, that kind of girl, I'm scared. Suddenly I'm like" she holds her hand to her heart and it flutters. "They are already dangerous girls."

***

Several girl gangs have come to Glossop's attention this year, but only one operates under a name. They call themselves PBG – "Pretty But Gangsta." The group was in the news in January when 16-year-old member Eden Nathan died in a car crash, after a police chase. (The case is before the Coroner's Court and the Independent Police Conduct Authority.) At her burial, PBG members wore T-shirts with photos of Nathan and "R.I.P ROOK.C P.B.G" printed on the front.



Eden Nathan's death is currently under investigation. Photograph: FACEBOOK Eden Nathan's death is currently under investigation. Photograph: FACEBOOK

Glossop calls PBG an "alphabet gang".

"I hear another three-letter acronym and I think, which one is it this time?" he asks. He takes their crimes seriously, but not the members. He has interviewed some of the girls. "You put me in an interview room with them and they want their mummy. The most gangster thing they ever did in their life was watch a rap video," he says. "It's so easy for these people to say things that make them look cool and it's important to disprove it."

It is easy to find PBG members on social media, but harder to engage them. One member agreed to meet, but after cancelling three interviews asked to answer questions through Facebook. This did not last very long. "If this is what your ganna be doing," she writes, "do yourself a favour and put it to good use something that all Pbgz can read something that they know is true to them."

She joined PBG last year. "I never thought I'd join them cause one day I was walking around Mangere and got stepped out by one of them." What changed? "My family changed and wasn't there for me as much as them so I joined my new family." She describes it as a sisterhood.

Initiation to the sisterhood involved beating up a girl, someone she was friends with but suspected was fake. She was drunk, and the girl shoved her, and it escalated from there. "For anyone to join any gang you have to smash someone to prove you won't back down and give your crew a bad name!"

Why commit crimes though? Does she feel no conflict about hurting people? Surely she wants something better for her future? All of this remains unanswered, because she lost patience and told me I was stupid for asking so many questions.

"every child or teen has their own life yes their parents gave bith to them but god created everyone equally but everyone has their own way of choosing how to live their life....so what I'm saying is Pbgz had a choice they either choose not to join the gang or to join...those who choose to join that is their decision no matter how much yoy people wanna judge us we won't listen....why...because it is our own life we go down for our own shit whoever follows is their choice."

Female youth offending is down – 390 girls appeared in the Youth Court last year, compared to 1029 in 2007. But in response to these events, police have made female youth offending a priority in its tactical plan and development plan. Glossop says it's about developing ways to manage the small number of girls who are committing severe crimes.

The appeal of being in PBG goes beyond committing crime, the member writes. "I'm in PBG cause I stand up for who I am cause stand by that bunch of girls I call family and cause I rep my hood. And that's wassgood!"

*Earlier this week, the 16-year-old charged with aggravated robbery appeared in Papakura District Court, charged with breaching her bail conditions. She had cut off her electronic monitoring bracelet. The case continues.