Richmond High School 15-Year-Old Gang Rape: The Kitty Genovese Connection

As more details come in about the gang rape of the 15-year-old Richmond High School student Saturday night, the more one is drawn to the realization that not only are some humans just little better than base animals, others are self-involved, socially apathetic animals. Without empathy and the ability to consider others, humans are no better than any other limited thinking animal, except that they can talk. In the case of the Richmond High School gang rape, where dozens of people either knew about, participated in, watched, communicated to others, and allowed the brutal beating, multiple raping, and robbery of a 15-year-old high school girl, the term "animal" seems most appropriate, if not generous.

But, then, some animals seem to be capable of empathy.

The 15-year-old girl was on her way to meet her father for a ride home from the Richmond High School homecoming dance when she was asked to join a group drinking. Before long, she had drank a little too much. And then something occurred to where at least 7-10 young men brutally beat, raped, and robbed the girl over a period of two-and-a-half hours. Richmond Police reported that while the rapes took place, onlookers took pictured and stood around laughing. According to Richmond Police Lt. Mark Gagan, "As people announced over time that this was going on, more people came to see, and some actually participated."

And not one individual that participated, watched, or had knowledge of the incident called the police. However, once some of the participants were inside the dance regaling others with the tale, someone finally called 911. Richmond Police found the 15-year-old near a picnic table. She was taken to a nearby hospital, treated for non-life-threatening injuries, and hospitalized.

Police arrested a 19-year-old at the scene. A 15-year-old classmate of the girl was arrested Monday. On Tuesday, police arrested three more. And they expect to arrest as many as five more for assault and/or rape.

The bystanders, those who did nothing but watch and take pictures, laugh and tell their friends will not be arrested. Their part in the crime, that of social apathy, unconscionable disregard, and cruel indifference will remain unpunished. According to Lt. Gagan: "We do not have the ability to arrest people who witnessed the crime and did nothing. The law can be very rigid. We don't have the authority to make an arrest."

But a 15-year-old girl's life lies battered and broken at the hands of unthinking and uncaring animals while other uncaring and unthinking animals participated in allowing the wantonly cruel crime to be perpetrated on an apparently helpless individual. Would that constitute craven indifference? And why cannot these teenage and young adult animals be held accountable for their base participation and abject complicity in the crime? Could they not be held as accomplices in the commission of a crime? With knowledge of a crime being committed can they not be held as aides and abettors to the crimes, especially those committed after the first assault and the first rape?

Perhaps not. Not through the legal system.

But what makes a human being just not care about another human being to the point that bodily harm is allowed and even acceptable? How does one acquire such depravity and ruthless indifference to the plight of another human being?

Psychologists call it the Kitty Genovese Syndrome. Kitty Genovese is the woman made famous by her horrible circumstances, by the manner in which she died, and the social apathy that rendered her dying cries ineffective. Kitty Genovese was stalked, stabbed, escaped her attacker for a brief period before being cornered, raped, and murdered in her own apartment building. Her screams for help went unanswered. Not one person called the police. The case made national news in 1964 as New York Times famously quoted a neighbor, "I didn't want to get involved."

Although the total number of witnesses to Kitty Genovese's murder is disputed, what is not disputed is that, of all those who heard her cries for help, not one called the police. And Kitty Genovese died.

Her brother, Vincent Genovese, told CNN (in reference to the Richmond High School gang rape), "I don't propose people get involved by running over and trying to stop it. Everyone has a cell phone. There is no excuse for people not to react to a situation like that."

But criminologists and psychologists maintain that the larger the number of people witnessing a crime, the less likely that any one of them will do something or inform someone that can or will intercede on the behalf of the victim. The Kitty Genovese Syndrome is also known as the bystander effect.

Although fear of reprisal and group ostracism plays its role in decisions "not to get involved," so also do ideas that reporting is not necessary, which is reinforced by the mentality that someone else in the group will take the responsibility and do it. All were no doubt present in the group of people that witnessed and participated in the rape of the 15-year-old girl.

And, still, the silence of so many remains inexcusable, no matter the psychology of the group at the moment, a moment which lasted two-and-a-half hours. That kind of inaction requires apathy, a total indifference to socialization rules, customs, mores, and sensibilities -- a break from what is civilized. And apathy on the scale that was required at Richmond High School, where the group showed further social distancing by the fact that they directly watched and/or participated in the violation (the gang rape) taking place, relegates those involved to the basic limited thinking territory of animals.

This is 2009, 45 years removed from the Kitty Genovese incident. And yet, after the event at Richmond High School Saturday night, years fade away and progression of time shows no progression at all in the way humans treat each other.

The jungle is still very much in evidence...

******

Source:

CNN.com