When a couple wrote to Pat Kenny's radio show last week to tell how their teenage son had been severely beaten up by a gang at the top of Grafton Street, in full view of crowds of people at around 11 p.m. one weekend night, many other parents must have shuddered in sympathy.
That's because many parents of teenage boys - and the boys themselves - recognise that danger stalks them on Irish streets.
Sounds melodramatic?
Not to one father, whose 15-year-old son was assaulted on a bright summer evening after a pop concert in a public park. "He and his mates were just sitting there at the end of the concert, at about 9 p.m., when a gang of other guys just attacked them."
Nor to Emer, whose once gentle-looking 15-year-old son has been shaving his head since he turned 14, to make himself look tough. "He says it's to frighten off people who might threaten him. He did feel threatened, and with reason - he'd been thumped a few times, and teased, because he used to be gentle-looking. He took up body-building, and boxing too." Nor to Deirdre, who doesn't allow her 17-year-old son to go to Dublin's city centre to socialise, especially on weekend nights, even though she and her husband allowed their older daughter to do so at that age. "He is more vulnerable, more likely to be attacked. And it's not just that he might get hurt - he's a big lad, and I'd be afraid of the damage he might do if he reacted. "
Nor, of course, to the parents who wrote the letter to Kenny's radio show: their 16-year-old son and a few friends left a show in the Olympia Theatre around 10.45 p.m. and stopped in a burger joint on Grafton Street on their way to getting a lift home from one of the group's parents; they were accosted by another gang of boys as they left the restaurant.
The end result was that their son's nose was broken.
You hear of incidents on the grapevine - a boy attacked at a respectable junior disco who spent 10 days in hospital - or simply from reading the newspapers. Most of us have heard of tragic cases where what might have started out as a mild fracas escalates rapidly - and a boy is killed. And it's not just parents who are worried. Although they sometimes won't admit it, many teenage boys are scared too. The terrible incident in Dublin last summer, in which a 15-year-old boy sitting on the front wall of his house chatting to friends in the early evening was stabbed to death with a screwdriver, "had significant ripples" in terms of its effect on boys' thinking, says senior child psychologist Andrew Conway.
He is in no doubt that our teenage boys are vulnerable to random violence as never before. "It's a phenomenon affecting 14- to 17-year-old boys, in particular. It used to be that teenage gangs fought on their own patch and would attack other gangs in their area. The difference now is that they'll fight in any area, and more at random."
It is a universal truth, he points out, that there is rivalry between teenage boys, in which gangs of boys reinforce their group identity by clashing with other boys. Belonging to a group is critically important for adolescent girls as well as boys "but boys are more aggressive and physical". Up to a point, the rivalry is even healthy.
How that rivalry is expressed will vary according to geography or social class: in a middle-class area, it might be fairly non-physical slagging between rival school football teams; or it might be the intense rivaly between parishes in the country, expressed through GAA teams; or it might be urban teenage gangs, fighting over territory.
The difference now, Conway reckons, is that innocent bystanders are getting caught up in the crossfire, and the factor X - you won't be surprised to hear - is drink and drugs.
"It disinhibits young people, and also makes them more likely to misinterpret cues. Kids abusing mood-altering substances are more likely to attack at random."
Sometimes boys are attacked by other boys who steal their designer gear, or their money. Or they can be attacked for no reason at all. Fights generally start, says Conway, with the classic: "What are you looking at?" All it takes is for one group of six boys to thus confront, say, three boys heading for the bus home for a fight to break out. What to do? The answer in Dublin seems to be the step already taken by many parents of younger teenage boys - don't allow them into the city centre by themselves, especially on weekend nights. Dublin's city centre isn't, of course, the only dangerous place in Ireland for teen boys, but parents will have a better feel for which parts of their own neighbourhood are safe.
Against her better judgement, one recent weekend Emer allowed her 15-year-old to go into town with a friend to a movie. Instead, he went to a city-centre pub, where he was served five pints "and came home footless".
Luckily, he got home safely - but she is acutely aware of the trouble he could have got into, for boys' fights, like those among adults, often break out when everyone has had too much to drink. Conway wholeheartedly agrees that this is a risky situation, and is emphatic that parents should try to stop their children drinking until they're 18 - except perhaps the Christmas drink with the family.
Parents should not worry about being over-protective of their sons, he says; in fact, they should take their cue from the way they have traditionally protected their teenage daughters.
"They should treat their sons the same way, dropping them at a specific place, collecting them, finding out where they're going, and with whom, and getting telephone numbers. Okay, we can't become a `no go' society - but boys need adult supervision."
Boys need to learn something too about how to handle tricky situations, he adds - because even if they're scared, many will feel they have to act tough and stand up for themselves, another factor that makes them more vulnerable than girls.
"Parents could teach them ways of sensibly managing bad situations. Like walking away, for example."
What parents probably don't have to tell boys is what Conway emphasises: the potential for serious damage, if a boy gets caught up in a street fight, is quite high.
