Young girls are forming gangs and using violence and aggression, according to the founder of a children's charity.

Sheelagh Cooper was speaking to a meeting of the Sandys Rotary last week before the murder of Shane Minors who was gunned down on Thursday morning.

His death was the third fatal shooting in the space of 12 days on December 5, Kumi Harford, 30, was shot in Pembroke and last Tuesday night Gary "Fingaz" Cann was gunned down on Sound View Road, in Sandys.

Mrs Cooper, who has run the Coalition for the Protection of Children since 1993, said 20 to 25 percent of black Bermudian children live below the poverty line, are undernourished and many live in one parent homes in neighbourhoods where gangs are glorified.

"Our crime problem has emerged because many Bermudians are trapped in a vicious cycle of poverty and desperation," she told Rotary members.

"For too long, we have ignored the great Bermudian dichotomy of the haves and have-nots, and we are now paying the price for our ignorance and laissez-faire policies with the lives of young Bermudians."

Reports have suggested that young black women outperform their male counterparts, but Mrs Cooper said many people were ignoring factors that indicated otherwise such as young women becoming increasingly aggressive and choosing to associate with "thugs".

"Increasingly, these young women are affected by the social, economic predisposing factors that drive violent crime as much as male counterparts," she said.

"While it is true that in the past the females in the black community outperformed the males once they had been in the workplace for a while and indeed have reached higher levels of education, the data that supports this trend is based on conditions ten to 20 years ago. It cannot be assumed that this trend will continue.

"Evidence from recent problems at the middle school level, but increasingly at the senior school level, suggests that young girls are forming gangs that mirror those of their male counterparts and are using violence and aggression in much the same way."

Mrs. Cooper, who already runs a breakfast programme in several schools, said the Island needed two single-sex weekly boarding schools, one for each gender.

"[These schools would be] stable, nurturing environments focusing on the many strengths that our young people in at-risk environments face," she said.

"These are not training schools or places of punishment, but environments that refuse to give up hope on young people and set out clear expectations and consequences for their choices."

She said something must be done, adding: "Essentially, the economic hardships of being among the working poor in Bermuda have constructed a legacy of drugs and crime, sustainably exerting social, economic, and psychological pressures on Bermuda's poorest children to pursue a life of crime."