Film details needs for girls in justice system: Documentary used to help find options for teens in Delaware

NEWARK -- When Lexi Leban set out to document the lives of three troubled teenagers in San Francisco, she thought it would take about a year to see them turn their lives around.

Instead, the filming lasted four years and the change was almost glacial.

"The most surprising thing for me was the lack of services for young women," Leban said Friday at the Delaware screening of her movie, "Girl Trouble," during a forum on girls in the juvenile justice system.

"Girls need girl-specific programming to break the cycle of incarceration," said Leban, who produced, directed and shot the movie with friend Lidia Szajko.

The importance of that message was not lost on her Delaware audience, made up of officials and advocates from the court system, law enforcement and nonprofit organizations. The gathering at the University of Delaware's Clayton Hall was sponsored by the nonprofit Delaware Center for Justice.*

Many of those in the audience are already working to improve counseling and treatment options for troubled girls through the Delaware Girls Initiative. Chandlee Johnson Kuhn, chief judge of Delaware Family Court, launched that effort about 1 1/2 years ago after growing frustrated by the lack of options for girls in Delaware.

"We know girls come into the system with different issues than boys," Kuhn said during a discussion after the movie. "But if we can do it for girls, then we can start doing it for boys."

The challenges girls face were at the heart of Leban's movie.

When the film opens, one girl is pregnant by an abusive boyfriend, another is selling drugs to survive and the third is trying to help her homeless mother. All have been charged with crimes. Over the next four years, the girls struggle with their own insecurities and fears while trying to avoid further trouble. One girl runs away and another shoots her brother during a drug-fueled argument.

Trying to keep the girls on the right track is the director of a nonprofit social service agency, who herself was a teenage single parent.

"Girls are usually victims of domestic violence or sexual abuse," said Leban, who is the daughter of Janet Leban, executive director of the Delaware Center for Justice. "The victims then become perpetrators."

Leban said many girls resort to what she calls "survival crimes," such as prostitution or the drug trade.

"They fall prey to men on the street who say, 'I'll take care of you,' " Leban said. "Those issues are girl-specific."

The documentary, released in 2004, has won several independent-film awards and has aired on PBS. Leban said she hopes the movie becomes an educational tool and catalyst for changes in the juvenile-justice system.

Leban said all of the girls have stayed out of trouble with the law since the movie was released.

*(This forum was also sponsored by SURJ, the Delaware Coalition Against Domestic Violence and the League of Women Voters of Delaware.)