Devon Harris' graphic straight talk on the wages of gang life had Morgan Road Middle School's seventh-graders groaning and giggling Tuesday.

That was just what he wanted -- for them to see the ridiculousness of the so-called thug lifestyle and how gruesome its consequences can be.

Prison rape, getting maimed and losing control of bodily functions are just some of the fates awaiting those who take up guns, drugs and violence, fighting turf wars over streets they don't even own, Mr. Harris said.

"It's a temporary high," he said. "It doesn't last long."

Mr. Harris, the director of Full Circle Refuge youth prison ministry, has been taking his anti-gang message to schools, churches and civic groups since 2006. If his talk at Morgan Road Middle was more stark than usual, he said, it's because south Augusta's elementary and middle school pupils are vulnerable to gang recruitment.

Less than half a mile from the school on Tobacco Road is the shuttered building where Richmond County Sheriff's investigators operated Colur Tyme tattoo parlor, buying stolen firearms and busting dozens of gang members in a sweeping undercover sting called Augusta Ink.

The pupils seemed well aware of the culture. Mr. Harris asked the teens, separated on both sides of the auditorium by gender, to name gangs they've heard of. South Augusta-based groups such as O-Dub and Georgia Deadly Boys were mentioned. He asked them to name gang symbols they might see on a wall, and they named the five-point star, the pitchfork and a Playboy bunny with one ear down.

On a projector screen, Mr. Harris showed gory pictures of fatal head wounds and bodies lying in pools of blood or face-up in a coffin. He played a clip of a "beat-in" initiation in which a boy was punched and kicked mercilessly by a half-dozen gang members. In another clip, a doctor told a story of a girl being "sexed in," changing her mind midway through, then being shot in her genitals.

Mr. Harris told them about his trips to youth prisons, including the Macon Youth Development Campus for girls.

"And they've been in there so long, some of them have forgot they're ladies, because they've been around ladies all the time," Mr. Harris said, alluding to jail rape.

"Fellas, I don't know about you, but I like my virginity," Mr. Harris said. "You feel what I'm sayin'?"

Chris Norris, 34, told the pupils he was stabbed nine times in an attack by the Jamaican Boyz gang in Valdosta, his injuries so severe that while he was recovering in intensive care his mother had to help him use the bathroom and a nurse had to give him pills rectally. It was humiliating, and it put stress on his family.

"I can stand here and tell you that I was responsible for putting my mother in an early grave," Mr. Norris said.