MS-13’s appeal to girls grows as gang becomes ‘Americanized’

5/7/18
 
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from The Washington Post,
5/4/18:

For 15 years, the girls lived parallel lives. Left behind in El Salvador by mothers bound for the United States, they grew up a few miles apart in San Vicente, entering adolescence just as the city sank into gang violence.

They fled within weeks of one another, traveling north in 2014 along the same smuggling route before ending up in the Washington suburbs.

It was there that Venus Romero Iraheta and Damaris Reyes Rivas finally met, after becoming entangled in the same violent street gang, MS-13. And it was there, in a wooded park in Springfield, Va., that Venus stabbed Damaris 13 times.

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