Girl gangs Pakenham: Groups allegedly targeting helpless children in violent attacks

Opportunistic girl gangs are allegedly targeting children as young as 10 to steal phones, after a string of sickening attacks in Melbourne’s southeast.

Girl gangs are allegedly targeting children as young as 10 to steal phones.

Girl gangs are allegedly targeting children as young as 10 to steal phones, with some teens filming footage of the sickening attacks and boasting about them on social media.

In the past month, there have been at least three alleged cowardly attacks by girl gangs who have targeted vulnerable children at parks and train stations in Pakenham.

Parents of the young victims and residents told Leader “enough is enough”, saying their peaceful community had become “dangerous” and “unsafe”.

All of the alleged attacks were by teenage girls described as being of African appearance, with community members calling upon African leaders to engage with their communities to assist troubled youths.

The Leader has also found several “fight club” social media pages, where young teens including girls upload sickening footage of fights, assaults and phone thefts to boast about them.

In one attack, a girl, 10, who was with her 11-year-old friend at a playground in Pakenham, were allegedly set upon by two teenage girls, believed to be of African appearance, about 11.20am on Saturday, November 14.

One girl was allegedly punched in the face twice after refusing to hand over her phone, while another was allegedly thrown to the ground before being punched and having her hair pulled.

It’s alleged one of the teenage thugs also stood behind a tree and filmed the terrifying encounter.

A mother of one of the victims, Nikki, last name withheld, told Leader, her daughter 10, said “enough is enough”, and called for tougher laws for violent teenage criminals.

“There needs to be tougher laws, they need to have harsher penalties on their first offence because while they’re on bail, they’re offending again, they don’t care,” she said.

The investigation into the alleged robbery and assault remains ongoing.

In another attack, distraught mum Shelley Files told Leader her family had been left “devastated” after her daughter, 13, was allegedly set upon, threatened and robbed by a group of six teenage girls at Cardinia Rd railway station on Monday, November 23.

“My daughter got off the train and she was approached by six Sudanese girls, they told her if she didn’t unlock her iPhone they were going to bash or kill her,” Ms Files said.

“I just can’t believe they would prey upon a young girl and do this.”

Ms Files told Leader the recent attacks were “horrific” and also called for tougher sentencing laws.

Four teens were arrested and charged over the alleged assault.

Two teens, 16, were bailed at a children’s court.

A 14-year-old will be returning to a children’s court a later date.

A 15-year-old, was bailed at a children’s court to reappear at a later date.

A Victoria Police spokeswoman said local police in Cardinia were aware there had been a small number of incidents in recent weeks that had been of concern to the community.

“We want to reassure everyone that police regularly and proactively patrol busy public places across the Cardinia Police Service Area (PSA), including shopping precincts and public transport hubs,” the spokeswoman said.

“We have arrested four teenage girls in relation to four separate robbery and attempted robbery incidents over the past couple of days and will continue to thoroughly investigate any other incidents that have occurred in the Cardinia PSA.”

Pakenham’s Darren Bortignon told Leader police and all levels of government needed to step in before someone was “seriously hurt”.

“Now that they’re targeting younger children, who are either alone, on their way to school or at a park, it’s not good enough — these children can’t defend themselves,” Mr Bortignon said.

He said he wanted to engage leaders of the Sudanese community to engage with troubled youths to help stop the problem.

South Sudanese Community Association of Victoria chairperson Achol Marial said the South Sudanese community did not support youth crime.

“No one appreciates what’s going on at the moment at a community level, if things could change we’d rather see them doing valuable things with themselves,” Ms Marial said.

“These young people that are making wrong choices and decisions are going through some stuff themselves that none of us could understand unless we sat down and spoke to them individually.”

She said the association had made a request to Youth Justice for a South Sudanese member to be on the parole board.

“No response was made, but that would really assist to have a community intervention and be able to advise the authorities on the best away forward, since the South Sudanese youths seem to over-represented.”

[e-mail]