Sisters in Arms

One moment, the girls were singing the theme song to “Sesame Street.” The next, they were talking about friends they knew who had been raped.

Little was taboo for the 13 girls, all between the ages of 13 and 15, and their five collegiate mentors who met Sunday and Monday for a retreat at a sycamore-lined campsite in picturesque Point Mugu State Park in Ventura County.

The girls and their chaperons got together to mark their completion of a yearlong pregnancy prevention program based at UCLA called Women In Support of Each Other, or WISE. The program, which President Clinton commended during a convocation speech at UCLA last year, uses dance, drama and games to help teenage girls develop enough self-esteem to stay in school and postpone having children.

During the retreat, sponsored by a $900 UCLA grant, the girls pitched their own tents, hiked, prepared meals and played a variety of games that touched on issues important to girls and women. They wrote and performed a skit about rape and played games designed to show how hard it is for teenage mothers to pay their rent.

“Junior high school for girls is such a critical time,” said Saru Jayaraman, 21, who is leading a drive to turn the group into a national nonprofit organization. “It is when self-esteem plummets and peer pressure is at its peak. The only way they feel they can be accepted is through boys.”

WISE was developed four years ago by Jayaraman and two other former UCLA students who were touched to learn that young single women with children make up the fastest-growing sector of the homeless population.

Last year, Jayaraman, who now attends a joint program in law and public policy at Yale and Harvard, opened a second WISE chapter at Yale to serve mostly African American girls at a middle school in New Haven, Conn. The group is also opening a chapter at UC Berkeley this fall.

WISE’s Los Angeles chapter, which uses about 30 volunteer mentors every year, operates at Berendo Middle School west of downtown and San Fernando Middle School, both of which feed into high schools with high pregnancy rates. The group is hoping that the recent graduates will themselves help mentor middle school girls next year.

Participants, who volunteer to attend the weekly after-school sessions, come from communities riddled with grown-up problems.

In the last year, the girls have talked about everything from the suicides of two classmates to the gang rape of a 12-year-old girl. All of them have a friend or acquaintance who has gotten pregnant.

The girls’ various views about boys, sex, pregnancy and relationships quickly become evident during the group’s activities.

At the campsite Monday, a session on rape began with a reading of a 1978 court case in which a judge chastised a rape victim for willingly accompanying her assailant to a secluded area. The girls struggled to come up with their own definition of rape.

One of them commented that a woman who shows off her body is “asking for it.”

“So you think that clothes can be a signal to a man that ‘you have a right to take my body’?” Jayaraman asked.

“Well, not really,” she replied.

By the time the discussion ended, several girls said the talk and others like it throughout the year had helped them see that dressing in a way that invites attention is different from asking to be attacked.

“I used to think if you made a guy excited it was your fault if he raped you,” said Maria Mendez, 15. “Now I have a different point of view. Now I know if you say no or didn’t want to, it’s not your fault.”

The program has received praise from administrators at San Fernando Middle School.

“It’s great. We’re really glad they’re on campus,” said Nick Bryan, assistant principal. “Middle school is the time when [girls and boys] . . . are confused. They have to adjust to their emotional and physical changes and pressures from their peers.”

The program has had critics too. Some faculty members and parents objected when the group had a particularly graphic discussion about lesbianism.

But the girls’ own reviews illustrate why the mentoring program has continued to win support.

“Before this group, I thought college was a waste of time,” said Marisol Mendez, 14. “But I changed my mind. Now I want to go to college. I’m good at math, and I think I should get a job with computers.”

Added Denise Fabian, 13: “I see the mentors like a sister. They respect us. We have fun. And they show us how to be grown-ups. . . . I wish when I grow up, I will be like them too.”

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Today’s centerpiece focuses on Women In Support of Each Other (WISE), a mentoring program based at UCLA that uses dance, drama and games to help teenage girls develop enough self-esteem to stay in school and postpone having children. For information, (310) 825-2333.