Police: Gang rape outside school dance lasted over two hours
 

WTF? They all need to be shot

http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/27/...ion/index.html

This is so sick. I just worked with a group of girls whose friend was gang raped at a Homecoming party. I didn't speak with the girl directly, but I was with her friends for hours. They were all guilty they hadn't been there for her and terrified that it could've been one of them instead. I was totally nauseated when they told me what happened. No one, especially kids, should ever live in this kind of fear.

This just makes me want to vomit. What the hell is wrong with people??????

This just makes me cry.

Forget about calling the police... all anyone had to do was walk inside the dance and tell a chaperone, at the very least. This is so disgusting.

I wonder if any of the people who were aware of the situation were females. Not that it would make it any more/less disturbing, but you would think a girl could more readily picture herself in that situation.. and react accordingly.

That is disgusting. That poor girl. :(

The perps need to be castrated with a rusty butter knife and no anesthesia.

Why aren't more people under arrest? Only two? Unacceptable. Heads must roll. Like, YESTERDAY. Those kids should never be allowed to have a school dance again. If no one would report something like this they don't deserve it until all of those kids are graduated. Where were the chaperones? If this was on school grounds they had an obligation to monitor all areas accessible to students during the dance. No, no, no.

This kind of story makes me fearful for my own teen daughter and her friends.

I agree the perps need to have parts removed in the worst way possible. I wont describe the rest of what I think should happen to them.

All 15 people who stood and watched need to be prosecuted.

I agree, but I would be nice and give them the option of either an open or closed castration, of course without any anesthesia.;)

I know I am probably going to regret asking this, but what is the difference?

Wanna see? I have pictures from work.:)

^^^ Hell no. maybe you can PM me a description?

How about a pic in the TMI thread so you can see the difference.:)

Truly a disconcerting incident, it is so sad. :(

The school I taught at had NO SOCIAL FUNCTIONS besides Prom. I think the facilities were just too small for almost 2000 students. If they can survive without dances, then this school can do the same in light of this disgusting, sad crime.

I'm appalled that kids could just stand there and allow something like this to happen! What a bunch of idiots! I'm sorry their age isn't an excuse either, at 15 you do know right from wrong!

These kids deserve NOTHING at school and I mean nothing. They should literally take away all social activities (not only dances, but sports events). If they can't show responsibility at a dance, what the heck makes me think they can be mature at a sporting event! I'm so appalled. Wow.

THANK YOU!
This is horrible. It has been major news around the Bay Area

...but more arrests, as many as 20 total, are expected, according to a police detective.


If the girl was a year younger...
A 1999 California law makes it illegal not to report a witnessed crime against a child, but the law applies only to children 14 and under.

Not the first time we have heard in recent months and years that a crime was witnessed by multitudes and no one lifted a finger to help.

There have even been cases where people have even recorded the crime in progress for youtube uploads later but still never came forward to help police catch the guilty.

Example was the kid who got beaten with a rail tie last month in Chicago.

Question: Should it be allowable to prosecute someone who witnesses a crime and not act to help when they have the ability to do so in cases such as this?

Should witnesses be held to the same culpability as those who are actually committing the crime?

In CT, it's possible to be charged with a misdemeanor for refusing to help the police in an investigation. My guess is that there are a number of states with similar laws.

The problem I could see is that there are a lot of reasons why people don't act to help in cases like this. Sometimes they're afraid of retaliation, for example. There are also cases where victims have sued the good samaritans, or where a good samaritan becomes a person of interest for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I'm not saying that's the case here, and it's obviously a terrible situation for the girl involved. You would think at least one of the witnesses could have done something, even as simple as getting an administrator (as people have suggested). I think it gets tough, however, when you start trying to attach criminal penalties for people who don't help.

ETA: That's without getting into all the legal issues, and coming at it from a strict practical perspective.

yes

There is a difference between seeing something and walking away because you fear getting involved or in trouble and standing there and watching...and for over 2 hours. There is no excuse for this. None. We are losing our humanity.

Who is "we?"

Humans, in general, aren't losing our humanity. Someone called the police when they heard the boys recounting the incident. As for the boys, there have always been inhumane morons and there will always be inhumane morons.

One report raised the idea of the Genovese Syndrome as part of a possible reason why no one acted.

I don't buy it 100% as it's not a proven theory.

Morally speaking, WTF.

Legally speaking, I don't know all the facts, but I can't see anything indicating anyone had any sort of duty to act here. If you think about the ramifications of imposing a duty to act on any witness to a crime, you'll probably pretty quickly figure out that'd be a bad idea.

So, 'stop snitching' works here hmm?

Now...my question to you is, when you say 'duty to act', how do you define it?

I mean that if you are simply a witness to a crime, did nothing to encourage it, were not aware it was going to happen, don't have a special relationship with the victim, you are well within your rights to do absolutely nothing.

If I see some individual in the process of killing another and I can stop it, I also have the option to just stand there and watch it happen, keep on walking, etc.

As far as 'snitching' goes, no. If I'm questioned by police about a crime about which I have first hand knowledge, if I'm not incriminating myself, I'm compelled to answer their questions or I'm obstructing justice.

Soooooo what about people that get arrested for "failure to render aid?" Pretty sure you are REQUIRED to do something if you see someone who has been a victim of a crime.

SomeONE called the police but many did/said nothing. Many should have been calling the police while the act was taking place and there was a time when many would've done just that and even tried to intervene. As for the "we," I see all human beings as interconnected and therefore we are all responsible for the societies/communities that we create (or allow to be created); whether we have directly or indirectly contributed to what goes on. Like the saying goes, if you're not a part of the solution, then you are a part of the problem. But that's just how I view things.

Okay but can we be empathetic for a second and not spew the legalities all the time? You know darn well and so does everyone else, that if it were your mother, sister, aunt, daughter, etc. being abused, you would hope to God that someone would certainly not exercise their "rights" and stand there and do absolutely nothing.

He actually did say he was shocked at what happened, but legally certain things applied.

Okay, well then maybe we should change these "rights" and maybe in fact we should have an obligation to do something, at least to call the police. Maybe then at least people wouldn't stand there and watch if they knew they could get arrested for doing so. We can create laws for everything else. Why not create them to protect our children? Isn't this our society? Don't we decide how it will be or won't be? Doesn't what happens in our society impact all of us, either directly or indirectly? Couldn't this have been anyone's child? We need to get with the village mentality or things will only get worse. Some of us had it once upon a time ago and we were better for it.

Depending on the state, usually this refers to things like traffic accidents.

Seriously, you do NOT want Joe Sixpack required to act like Captain America - we could have had 2 stabbings in addition to a gang rape. Somebody should have called the cops. Nobody should have stood around and watched. Nobody should be required to intervene, though, unless trained to do so (such as campus police or administrators).

from the article:

A 1999 California law makes it illegal not to report a witnessed crime against a child, but the law applies only to children 14 and under.

"We do not have the ability to arrest people who witnessed the crime and did nothing," Gagan said. "The law can be very rigid. We don't have the authority to make an arrest."

Anyone seen "The Accused" with Jodie Foster?

If some people literally stood there and watched the act for two hours, and the rapists knew it, I would be surprised if a prosecutor did not try to assert that by standing there and watching, they were participants/conspirators. They may not have been required to stop it, but watching it for two hours amounts to acting as an excited audience to the rapists' performance. Their presence was enough to egg on the rapists. By hanging out, they probably drew out the awful attack and attracted more rapists to join in.

And I saw today that one of the guys arrested is 32? What the hell were these older men doing on the grounds of a high school homecoming dance? I also think it's sad that this girl was supposedly walking somewhere to get picked up by her dad...where was she walking to? I just thought it was kinda weird that her dad wasn't picking her up in front of the school or something.

Ahh gotcha, I thought it would go beyond traffic accidents. Which btw sounds kinda lame, you have to stop and render aid for a traffic accident, but not if you witness something like this.

I think these boys were too busy trying to get theirs off to worry about stabbing someone, but I get what you are saying. Although, if there were that many people watching, had someone stepped into help, I bet there would have been at least 1 or 2 others that would join in. It's that mentality that you won't do something unless someone else goes first.

Not that I'm a lawyer, but it seems like anyone who witnessed and did nothing could be charged as an "accessory" to the rape. Which if that is the case, and they find the witnesses, they should all be charged as accessories.

I'm pretty sure that wouldn't fly. To get a conspiracy charge, you have to have a 'true agreement' between the defendants to do the crime. There's accessory after the fact, but obviously, that doesn't work.

I just can't think of anything to charge these folks which don't have elemental holes you could drive a Mack truck through. That said, I don't know diddly about the California penal code, so I very well could be missing something.