www.youtube.com/.../watch?v=HONHKmb7e-I

First a look at cruelty of a more
conventional kind. The underground wars

of teenage girls.

As Kieth Morrison reports, and maybe as
some of you remember, nobody hits

but girls do get hurt.

(Rachel Simmons)
What do girls do when they're angry with

each other.

(girl)
We call each other names. You know uh,

spread gossip.

They'll turn away giggle when somebody
passes, they point, laugh, whisper. I mean

girls, they know how to get under each
others skin.

(male reporter)
Here in what should be the last of their

happy little girls years, in the middle
schools of America, is a dirty little

secret, that's finally getting exposed for
what it is. A kind of hidden bullying, so

viscous that some of its innocent young
victims will be scared for life.

We don't even have a language to talk
about this.

(male reporter)
This is female aggression. Bullying.

And it is, as author and ?scholar
Rachel Simmons an epidemic among America's

ten to thirteen year old girls. And now
after years of being ignored its getting

some notice. In New Hampshire, parents are
suing a school because their daughters

were bullied there. At the exclusive
Madeira School in Virginia,

they're investigating a blacklist compiled
by seniors against younger girls.

In Canada, a sixteen year old was held
criminally liable after the suicide a

bullied classmate.

The girls say well guys fight and it's
over with. It's done. Then they're friends

again. Girls will hate each other forever.

(male reporter)
It's just that this aggression is

virtually invisible.

They do it so that no one can see it. They
do it beneath the radar of parents and

teachers so that they won't get caught.

Simmons believes that girl bullies,
using relationships as a weapon inflict

far more damage than most of us would like
to think. In fact, she says it's getting

worse. The evidence suggest that girl
bullies now have a new tool to spread

their ugly rumors. The internet.

Your not there talking, what face to face
so you could really say anything and you

just write whatever. And it can be really
mean and then that person will print it

out let's say. And then show all their
friends and it's accessed to like the

whole wide world.

(male reporter)
Of course, since most of the girls who

engage in this sort of thing are just
or twelve or so. We can assume the

internet gossip mill is at least
relevantly innocent, isn't it?

What could be so harmful? What if you're a
seventh grade girl, and somebody puts up

on a bulletin board that you perform
obscene or lewd sexual acts with three or

four guys in the grade?

Wait a minute you mean eleven twelve year
olds are sending messages...

Sure!

Explicit sexual messages.

Sure, sex offenders are doing that.

(male reporter)
When Simmons was at Oxford studying about

this sort of thing, she went looking for
research about girl bullying. She found

almost none, and yet she knew first hand
this was important stuff.

When I was eight years old I was bullied
by another girl.

(male reporter)
It wasn't physical bullying, it seemed to

her much worse.

This particular person isolated me. She
made people run away from me. She made

people not be my friend anymore, and it
was the memory of that isolation and that

loneliness that stayed with me for most of
my life.

(male reporter)
And so for three years she traveled the

country, talking to girls. Her research
became a book called Odd Girl Out.

A title and an expression full of
meaning for many young girls.

Dateline watched as Rachel Simmons talked
to groups of high school and middle school

girls.

What are some of the other ways that girls
use body language to show that they're

angry?

The death stare. No honest to God like...

And you know...

So there it is, unspoken intimidation or
the hurting technique, that is physical

exclusion. Listen to this high school
senior.

Well I think one example is when they
don't want someone in a conversation,

or they don't want someone at their lunch
table they physically move. That girl will

have room and they'll push them out like
this so that girl knows physically

she's not in there so there's no way her
voice is going to be heard in that

conversation.

Talk to Merriam and communicate to me
that your talking about me.

[Whispering]

[laughing]

And its so obvious and they know that
they're like hurting your feelings...

You can see the darting eyes and
pointing fingers.

(male reporter)
This high school girl talks about

something called shoulder bumping.

When they'll walk pass you and then like
go like that so that they, they hit your

shoulder. I've seen, I saw that in the
hallway the other day and one girl did

that to the other. The other didn't turn
around and I was like wow that's pretty

cold.

It was at camp and we, I was friends with
the girl. We've been to camp several times

so we're pretty good friends.

(male reporter)
Another Rachel. Rachel Gutman, now twelve.

They were about ten, she says,
when it happen.

We'd hang out together you know some
places. While we were walking to

activities we'd talk.

(male reporter)
Friends for life or so Rachel Gutman

thought until out of the blue something
terrible.

When she was talking to other cabin
friends and I'd go up and she'd um we're

busy right now I'm sorry I'll talk to you
later. And it'd, it really hurt me because

I thought we were really good friends. I'd
go to my cabin and I'd sit on my bed and I

would cry and ask why. Why did this
happen? Why don't I have any friends?

What I found was, most girls were never
informed why they were being ostracized.

But the pain of not knowing why someone
has let go of you, cut you lose, and is

suddenly behaving as though you don't
exist, is so devastating. To and to call

into question your hole notion of social
relationships and notion of friendship.

There's a segment of the audience that
will watch this story, who will say oh

please, psycho babble. This is just
people, this is just people growing up.

Its tough.

I don't think kids who want to kill
themselves because of what they

friends are doing constitutes as something
that's part of growing up. I don't think

incredible depression at the age of
thirteen or fourteen, having to be

medicated, uh should be part of growing
up.

For me it, it was a lot of shame and
embarrassment.

(male reporter)
Then there're other girls, for whom

growing up is all about dealing with
terrible guilt. Andrea Lee is twenty-three

now but remembers her journey from victim
to bully like it was yesterday.

Identifying yourself as a bully can't be
easy? Nobody likes to think of themselves

as a bully.

No, yeah it's pretty embarrassing.

(Male reporter)
It all started because she was or felt

like about the only Korean American
growing up in Eastern Tennessee, and

anybody, boy or girl would've found this
awful.

I heard a lot of... a lot of like... you
know like Asian jokes like slant eyes.

Things like that.

(male reporter)
And kids, as everybody knows, don't like

to be different. Not in middle school.

I wanted to change everything that was
Asian about me. I, I wanted to like be as

white as possible. I had permed hair. I, I
wore a lot of makeup. I thought that, you

know if I was popular then, then it
wouldn't matter that I was Asian.

(male reporter)
Andrea says that she certainly didn't plan

to hurt anyone.

I had a best friend and we were very
close.

(male reporter)
But then her best friend wrote her a note,

which said something nasty about one of
the most popular girls in the school. And

Andrea, desperate to score points with
the in crowd, betrayed her friend.

I took the note and I gave it to a girl
that I thought was popular, and I said

'look, this is what she thinks about you,'

thinking that, that that would somehow
like gain this girls favor.

(male reporter)
And what happened. Andrea's best friend

shunned by the in crowd.

But it happened to be your best friend. \

It was my best friend and I'm horribly
ashamed about that. I can remember what

she looked like. I can remember how she
was crying when I walked in that morning.

And I can remember sitting there saying I
don't know how she got the note. I don't

know why they know this now.

And you denied.

I denied everything.

How did it feel to deny?

It was, it was scary. I felt out of
control. I felt I didn't know what was

happening.

(male reporter)
Of course her best friendship was over as

of that day and in the end that betrayal
won her absolutely nothing.

You gave up you best friend.

Yeah.

In an effort to graduate to the popular
group...

Sadly.

and it didn't work.

Of course not.

(male reporter)
Andrea was so ashamed by what she'd done,

that she kept that betrayal a secret,
until she agreed to come on television as

a warning to others.

It needs to be talked about so we can
figure out how uh, how to engage girls

differently and try to stop it.

(male reporter)
The question is how? Well for one thing

says Simmons, girls need to be taught
more honest ways of expressing anger.

That they don't have to hide behind a
phony screen of niceness.

I don't think that women are and girls
enjoy an equal access to feeling their

anger, to expressing their anger.

(male reporter)
Older girls can help, Simmons says.

Mentors, who have passed that difficult
stage. The Erie Pennsylvania Ophelia

Project is working at that very thing. The
project uses mentors, high school seniors

to teach younger ones to avoid being a
victim, or a bully,

or caught in the middle.

(student)
You have a choice. You can either stay a

nobody and hang out with Laura or you can
come and hang out with me and my friends.

That's all they want is someone to
listen and someone to understand.

(male reporter)
And remember Rachel Gutman? She did

something about it too. Once she realized
those friends didn't

have to be her whole life.

One day I went to the dining hall. This
literally happened. I went in and I sat

table. A new table! I mean that's all I
did. It was one step.

How are you?

(male reporter)
And it worked! She has lots of friends

now, but the experience changed her.

I guard myself. I make sure that I still
am friends with other girls.

(male reporter)
And so we watched them grow up.

These innocents. From dolls to dating,
but only sometimes a glimpse of what a

minefield growing up can be.

Research suggest this female aggression
peeks in middle school and begins to ebb

as girls develop more maturity and

empathy. Rachel Simmons will be available
tomorrow to answer your questions in an

online chat at our website
Dateline.msnbc.com