Humanity Bites

[author_by_night]

An innocent teen girl, raped outside the homecoming dance.

Onlookers didn't call 911, or even notify adults there (and there usually were some teachers acting as chaperones, IIRC).

Meanwhile on customers_suck, a poster says a woman died of an OD while clubgoers stepped over her body. One of them finally off-handedly mentioned it - but only because she was complaining about the taps.

Yesterday, Mom and I were driving when an ambulance came barreling down the street. One car refused to pull over.

I don't care how hot the person you're making out with is. I don't care how much fun you're having dancing. I don't care how drunk you are. (If you can still find your car keys and drive into a tree drunk, you can call 911 drunk.)  I don't care if you're on your way to work, to class, to the movies, shopping on Black Friday, or whatever else.

If someone is in need of help, you get off your rear end and help them in any way possible.

I guess I just have such a hard time understanding people. Why is their fun more important than another life?

Okay, so many in the case of the kids, some were worried they'd get their friends into trouble. But their "friends" were committing a horrible crime. (It disturbs me even more that kids were gang-raping, to be honest.)

Of course, I also have to wonder how not even chaperones present noticed the screams. Were none of them occasionally checking the doors and the parking lot?

People, we need to take care of each other. We're all we've really got when it comes down to it.

Comments

[vegablack62.livejournal.com]

I agree with you, but I will say in the onlookers defense that sometimes people don't understand what they are seeing. They might only see a very drunk or inebriated person and may have thought the person wasn't in any danger except for getting in trouble. My daughter saw a man having a stroke at the trainstation she uses every day to get to work. Her first reaction was to think he was a drunk and to want to avert her eyes. Both to mind her own business and to keep him from getting thown out. But then she realized he was very very sick. No one else went over to him at all, many people walked by until she approached him and started to call 911, at the same time a nurse joined her. People kept ignoring them, but when they saw it was an emergency they began to help.

People are herd animals they respond to how the group responds especially in a bar. If no one else thinks the person is sick, then they don't either. I read somewhere that studies show people are less like to help someone in need if they are in a crowd. They follow whatever the crowd's reaction is. If people are alone or in a very small group with a stranger who needs help, then they are more likely to give it. They're thinking that no one else thinks this is a problem, it must not be a problem.

Maybe no one heard the rape victim because of the noise. Kids scream and yelp a lot in parking lots of events. I've heard it as a chaparone and wondered what it was only to discover it was a bunch of kids screaming to fool around.

(I've chaparoned and what you discribed is one of my biggest nightmares.)

As far as the ambulance, maybe they were playing music and didn't hear the ambulance or maybe they were just total jerks.

I hate the idea of people standing around like sheep doing nothing while someone obviously needs help.

[vegablack62.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry when I first commented I didn't catch that there were onlookers, not just people inside the dance.

[vegablack62.livejournal.com]

I really didn't understand the rape incident you were talking about. I appologize. I thought people were inside the dance and might have possibly been unaware of the attack. The story you are refering to is horrific.

[adrian-the-dork.livejournal.com]

humanity as a whole is fucking idiotic. There are some lovely induviduals out there, but as a group, mankind sucks.

[edgiko.livejournal.com]

I agree at the same time when it comes to onlookers, sometimes you're just too shock to even move or do anything. I remember when my friend and I were being attacked by drunks and the car in front of us just sat there and I could see the people just stare in utter shock of what was going on. They couldn't even move when the green light came on and it took them a while to actually move the car.

We're also just desenestized to the world around us. It's kind of scary when you think about it but when people are being attacked or something, we just either stare in horror or just walk away.

We're also taught to fear helping strangers. How many things in our media portray that helping a stranger can cause you to may die, get kidnapped, or some other horrible deed? The good person that helps someone out in media almost always gets a horrible thing done to them; never something rewarding. Media does shape how we look at things and seeing that it may happen to you if you interfere is just...sad. I can understand human fear over someone being attack but when someone is sick or possibly dying? It's just sad and something we need to get out of.

There's also the fact how nasty high school is. There could be the factor no one really liked the girl in first place and it could have been set up. As disgusting it is to think about, it is a possibility because people are that fucking cruel.



But the ambulance? Unless you're not noticing the blinding lights behind you, you have no excuse. I do have my music loud enough that I can't hear the sirens sometimes but I at least see the fucking lights and pull over. It is the law and you

[white-serpent.livejournal.com]

It's horrible, but it's not the first case of something like this in history, you know. Look up Kitty Genovese.

There's some sense of diluted responsibility with crowds, I think-- "Someone else must surely have taken care of this. I don't need to do anything."

[eurora.livejournal.com]

Agreed.

Though, if you look at the Kitty Genovese case - or any other subsequent diffusion of social responsibility study - you'll find that it's not uncommon because people generally think *someone else* will do it, so they needn't bother. Obviously this is faulty logic and doesn't guarantee that someone will get help, which is really sad.

[vegablack62.livejournal.com]

The more I read about this case and the comments people made the more depressed I become.

[auntiemamie.livejournal.com]

What I find extremely disconcerting about this rape is that there were also adults involved. One of the men arrested is 22. What the heck was he doing at a high school homecoming dance! I'm just praying that the girl gets adequate professional help in dealing with this situation.