13-Year-Old Pensylvania Boy Savagely Beaten in Broad Daylight for 30 Minutes Before Someone Stops to Help

Three weeks ago, what police have described as a "wolf-pack" of teenagers in Upper Darby, PA, apparently at random, picked out 13 year-old Nadin Khoury as he walked home from school with a friend, kidnapped and mercilessly beat the boy, tried to hang him upside down from a tree. When he fell out, they set on him again, kicking and beating him and were finally attempting to hang him from a six-foot wrought iron fence, when a good Samaritan jumped out of her car and rescued the boy. At least one of the attackers took video of the assault, allegedly intending to post it on a social networking site.

While the sheer viciousness of the attack is shocking enough, two points struck me as particularly chilling: The attack continued for thirty minutes, thirty minutes, with the child screaming for help the whole time, before someone actually stopped to help. A woman can be seen on the video, walking by and doing nothing. We parents always teach our kids to "use the buddy system" and walk home with a friend, for safety's sake. Yet Nadin had been walking home with a friend when he was snatched from the street; buddy system be damned, there was no safety in numbers for him. No mention is made anywhere in any of the news accounts I have seen as to what that friend did when Nadin was attacked. Did the friend call 911? Did he run to get an adult? Or did he just thank his lucky stars that the attackers had let him go, letting self preservation outweigh loyalty and the morality of not helping someone who was being attacked? It is impossible to tell from reports.

The second chilling, and even more disturbing, aspect of the case is the post-script to the story: Nadin told reporters than he was told by his school not to return to class, and that his family was forced to move after they were allegedly threatened. Yet, according to Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood, "For a variety of reasons" the perpetrators are not being charged as adults.

Seriously?

Not only was Nadin,who has been the victim of bullies before, told not to return to school, as if he is the one who did something wrong, but either the perpetrators or their friends compounded the attack with threats to the Khoury-Wright family-action known apparently everywhere other than in Upper Darby, PA as "intimidating a witness"---and not only are these boys apparently not facing additional charges, but nobody has been charged for the threats. The threats are serious enough that the family felt forced to move...and the perpetrators are still not being charged as adults?

The message being sent by prosecutors, not just to the kids who did this, but to any other kids who might contemplate doing something similar in the future is crystal clear: It's okay, kids. Go ahead and torture the random kid of your choice. It'll be off your record the day you turn eighteen.

And we wonder how things like the group rape of a high school girl at a school dance with dozens of witnesses who do nothing to help her, happen. There are times when something more sinister than the bystander effect is at fault.

It's okay, kids. Go ahead and torture the random kid of your choice.

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