| | Words in the News |
INTRO | | BBC Correspondent Stephen Sackur reported on America’s violent youth. We also heard from an inmate of a prison for teenage murderers in Texas. |
IN FULL | |  | Listen to the report in full |
 |  | 15th July 1999 Violent teenagers in US detention centres |
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| NEWS 1 | | Dawn breaks over Giddings State School. Twenty teenage boys sporting regulation white t-shirts are on the move. Here in the heart of conservative Texas, young criminals, murderers and thugs are forced to confront military style discipline, a traditional view of right and wrong. But Giddings is more than a boot camp devoted to breaking down angry adolescents. This place also offers inmatesa glimpse of redemption but only if, like eighteen year old Leanne, they are prepared to confront their crimes head on.
'I was standing behind my mother and I pulled out a twenty five calibre pistol and I shot her in the back of the head and killed her." from |
WORDS | | dawn breaks: poetic English which means 'the day begins' sporting: wearing with pride, sometimes to show off thugs: rough violent people, usually criminals boot camp: US English - a military training camp especially for new soldiers inmates: prisoners a glimpse of redemption: literary/poetic expression meaning an opportunity to reform |
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| NEWS 2 | | Just because my mother abused me and took her anger out on me and intentionally hurt me all those years, that gave me no right to take her life. I’m not the judge, I’m not an executioner. You know, it’s not my place. And I’ve started realising all the other options that I had. I could have left. I could have went and told someone, tried to seek some kind of help. There was a lot of things that I could have done but I x-ed them all out and said ‘no, this is the only way’. |
| WORDS | | to abuse: to mistreat a young person options: choices I could have went: non-standard colloquial English - standard form would be 'I could have gone' but I x-ed them all out: American slang, not used in British English. Here it means 'I crossed them off my list of possibilities' |
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| | | Read more in BBC News Online |
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