Escaping gang life tough for women, too

Maria Robinson knows there's a good life outside of the gang she was born into.

When she was growing up in Chicago's west side, Unknown Vice Lord gang leader Willie Lloyd killed her father. Another gang made an unsuccessful attempt to kill her mother, who dealt Robinson physical abuse by beating and burning her. The remaining members of her family were drug dealers.

Robinson said she was never raised to know wrong from right, and she's only one of many girls the system overlooks until they're behind bars — a product of their culture.

"I do have a choice," Robinson said. "I want to give my girls the direction I never had."

Now a 36-year-old Christian evangelist, Robinson lives in Champaign, Ill., with her daughters. She got out of gang life. And she doesn't want to be the only one.

Robinson shared her story with 17 officers, correctional counselors and teachers at a gang conference Friday at the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office, so they can give Utah's gang-affiliated women help that was not available to her.

The problem is that females in the gang community are often overlooked or misunderstood, said DeLano Gilkey, chief executive of the National Youth Violence Consultants, which hosted the conference.

"I've always just had the girl stand aside while I dealt with the man, when she can be just as dangerous as he is," said Mike Lyens, a detective in the Salt Lake Area Gang Project.

Gilkey said law enforcement, counselors and teachers need to dispel myths about women's relationships with gangs. Women can commit violent crimes; they're not always innocent bystanders of gang activity, he said.

The first thing officials can do to give young women a chance at a life outside of a gang — and their only perceivable escape, the streets — is to understand their situation, Gilkey said.

"Everyone in my life was a drug dealer," Robinson said. "It was hard to know wrong from right."

When a neighbor threatened Robinson's premature infant daughter 21 years ago, she retaliated by stabbing her multiple times. Teachers and friends defended her in court. She wasn't prosecuted.

Women are as much a victim of growing up in a gang culture as men, Gilkey said. When Robinson's father was killed, the Unknown Vice Lords targeted her, the eldest of her siblings, as a new member. Her uncle molested her, as he did all the women in their gang, Robinson said. They introduced her to drug dealing.