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NEW YORK (CAP) - A new study out of Harvard Medical School suggests that since the release of the first Grand Theft Auto video game in 1997, incidents of 12-year-olds involved in carjackings and hooker beatings have gone up almost 1300 percent.
"Prior to Grand Theft Auto, it was relatively rare to see an affluent, suburban 12-year-old beating a hooker with a hammer or a baseball bat and then carjacking the ambulance when it showed up," noted Dr. Lawrence Kukner, author of Why Your 12-Year-Old Is A Hooker-Beating Carjacker. "Nowadays it happens so frequently that a lot of hookers won't even take suburban 12-year-olds as clients anymore."
Skeptics are loath to attribute that trend to violent video games like Grand Theft Auto, but Kukner says the anecdotal evidence is hard to deny. "Some 12-year-olds have been known to play the game once and immediately go out and assault the first hooker they come across," he noted.
With Grand Theft Auto IV: Hooker-Beating Carjack City now on store shelves, experts are concerned that children will emulate its violent action, which includes attacks on prostitutes, police officers and pizza delivery boys with knives, baseball bats, a nightstick, pistols, machine guns, shotguns, rifles, grenades and rocket launchers. But as its creator, Rockstar Games, is quick to point out, not all at once.
Officials at Rockstar have said they are perplexed over the controversy, since the game is clearly rated "M" for mature audiences. "The game is aimed at those who'd want to spend hours and hours of their free time pretending to kill pizza delivery boys with rocket launchers," noted Rockstar VP Don Housely. "You know, mature people."
"To my knowledge, no copy of Grand Theft Auto has never made its way into the hands of anyone under the age of 17," continued Housely, although he admitted the decision to include beta copies of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in boxes of Fruity Pebbles in 2003 was, in retrospect, "an unfortunate marketing choice."
But one former 12-year-old who spoke under condition of anonymity said plenty of kids his age have played the game. "I got Grand Theft Auto: Vice City for my 12th birthday - I told my mom it was an educational game, like the LeapPad," he said.
"I hadn't been playing for 10 minutes when the pizza delivery guy came to the door," he continued. "I beat him with a hammer and took all his tip money, so you could say that the game did turn out to be pretty educational."
Kukner says the problem may be reaching even younger children, citing the Palm Beach 7-year-old arrested recently for stealing his grandmother's SUV and leaving a trail of destruction in his wake.
"I'm not saying it's because of Grand Theft Auto," said Kukner, "but when he finally got out of the car the first thing he said was, Where's my bitches at? Then he shot at police with a rocket launcher."
Experts have also pointed out that this isn't the first time unhealthy behavior has been traced to a video game, noting that many of the youngsters who were hooked on Pac Man in the 1980s are now morbidly obese.
