DORCHESTER, Mass. — Called together at a meeting here to strategize against youth violence, some parents see it for the first time.

Their stony faces watch a grainy video known in some dark corners of the Internet as the ""most brutal beatdown of 2007,"" as they sat inside the Vietnamese American Community Center in Fields Corner, a neighborhood in the Dorchester area of Boston.

In the video, which originally appeared on YouTube, more than 20 youths from at least three different gangs beat two teenagers into what appears to be an unconscious state.

Trâm Tr?n, a liaison for Boston Police District C-11, is introduced in Vietnamese. One thing she must try to do is quell rumors in the community that the incident from last summer in a Fields Corner parking lot was faked.

""In recent years, the number of kids involved in violence has increased sharply,"" a translator from Viet-AID (a Dorchester-based nonprofit that serves Vietnamese) begins, following Tr?n’s words. ""The parents often have no idea what’s going on. Parents come to their kids’ schools and report that their kids just go out of the family. They can’t find them.""

The generation gap between Vietnamese-American youth and their parents can be vast. Vietnamese youth in Dorchester face a number of challenges, not all of them scenes from a typical American childhood.

Vietnamese teens might find extra incentive to join gangs, act tough, or find other ways to protect themselves from threats real or perceived. They often listen to American hip-hop or other high-energy popular music, not unlike the majority of teens in Dorchester.

Their parents likely belong to one of a number of waves of immigrants that came after the war ended in 1975. They prefer Vietnamese traditional music, particularly at community events.

The contrast manifests in the room when three teenage girls with tight-fitting clothing and a bare midriff or two assemble in front of the crowd and dance in sync to an American hip-hop track. Though some of the audience cracks smiles, many revert to the same stony expression they held during the gruesome video as the girls went through their suggestive routine.

In break-out sessions designed to give participants a chance to generate ideas that can address the violence depicted in the video, the idea that children have too much freedom is a common theme; moral and civic education is suggested, ""like in Vietnam.""

One group leader reports a story about a man in Brockton, Mass., who ran afoul of the state’s Department of Youth Services after chaining his daughter’s leg to her bed out of frustration with his inability to keep track of her whereabouts.

On the lighter side, some suggest that a lack of communication is the main problem, and parents have nowhere to turn when their children are out of control. Youth often speak far better English than their parents, and so also hold an advantage in controlling communications from their schools.

Trâm Tr?n’s office at C-11 and Viet-AID are common places for parents to call, and they often can’t handle every request.

""They call us and we don’t have the capacity,"" says Hi?p Chu, director of Viet-AID, after the meeting. ""We kind of turn them away. They don’t understand that there are different agencies doing different things.""

Vivian Soper of Catholic Charities reports another side of the coin, on which her organization searched for more than a year to hire a Vietnamese liaison who could help connect the community to their services.

""It’s difficult,"" says keynote speaker Thanh Tr?n, a professor from Boston College, after the event. ""They raise an important point. We need to provide more support for parents where they could contact to get help with a situation before it is too late.""

The parenting focus is an unexpected one for organizers. They had imagined parents’ greatest demand would be more youth services, not parental counseling and advice.

Viet-AID and a growing consortium of Vietnamese, Catholic and Dorchester groups are now turning their attention to organizing a meeting to get the perspective of Vietnamese youth. The date has yet to be set.