Cries for Help Not Always Answered

(Oct. 30) -- A girl is gang raped outside a California high school, and an entire nation asks one question: How could this happen?

The details from police, so far, remain sparse: up to 10 possible attackers, up to 10 more witnesses, a 15-year-old victim and an attack that lasted more than two hours on the grounds of Richmond High School the night of the homecoming dance in the school gym.

The sad truth is that crimes like these, where witnesses fail to report or intervene in very public violent crimes, are well known to legal and psychological experts. The incidents, which happen more often than most people probably realize, illuminate troubling tendencies in society at large.





People often hear cries for help and think someone else will call the authorities, or they don't know what to do and so do nothing -- a phenomenon known as the "bystander effect," explained Denise Hines, a research assistant professor at Clark University in Massachusetts who teaches classes on that very subject. Witnesses may also fear enraging the attacker, or attackers, and becoming victims themselves.

People also take cues from those around them, experts said. Just as one person yawning can inspire a roomful of yawns, so too can one person -- or several -- engaging in a crime encourage others to go along.

"People tend to look to other people to figure out what to do," Hines said. "Among teenagers, this must be particularly strong."

So far, police have arrested six men in the California case. Five are teenagers.

Sheri Parks, an assistant professor at the University of Maryland, also suggested that the alleged rapists' ages may have played a significant role the case.

"They give away a bit of their will to the crowd, since the crowd seems to view it as almost entertainment," she said. "Then maybe even fear takes over. If you jump in and help her, what happens to you?"

Many teens today have had years of exposure to violent video games and media images, Parks said, which studies show desensitizes them to violence. Richmond police said they believe some of the witnesses took cell phone pictures of the girl's ordeal – further proof of possible desensitization, Parks said.

"We've created this environment where adolescents can treat this awful stuff as spectacle," she said.

The bystander effect isn't new. One case frequently cited in the press and by experts is the 1964 murder of 28-year-old Catherine "Kitty" Genovese. Police tallied 38 witnesses who saw or heard part of her rape and murder in a New York City neighborhood. She screamed for help and the attack lasted more than half an hour -- but no one called police until hours later. Many didn't want to get involved, or they thought someone else had phoned authorities, according to media reports.

But cries for help continued to be ignored. Jodie Foster won an Oscar in 1989 for her role in the movie "The Accused," which mirrored the real-life case of a woman who was raped by a group of men in a Massachusetts bar five years earlier. Customers kept the bartender from calling for help, according to media reports at the time.

In Connecticut this May, Angel Arce Torres, seen in the video below, died almost a year after a hit-and-run driver struck him on a Hartford street. The recording showed indifferent witnesses walking and driving by the man sprawled in the middle of the street.


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Staying away isn't always a bad thing, said Tod Burke, a former police officer turned college professor at Virginia's Radford University. A Good Samaritan rushing to aid a victim in the midst of a crime could end up needing to be rescued as well.

The law is ambiguous. In some jurisdictions, if a witness encourages the illegal act, he can be held just as responsible as the person who committed the physical crime. But failing to report the crime -- out of fear or groupthink or any other reason -- remains a gray area, with different jurisdictions differing on the legal responsibility of witnesses.

And the truth is, similar cases likely happen far more often than most people realize.

"We only hear about the celebrated cases," Burke said. "What about the cases that occur every day and action isn't taken?"

He's witnessed the effect personally -- in his own classroom as a college student in the 1970s. A girl in a hallway cried for help, and no one in his class moved. It was a setup, the professor said, and the students admitted they thought someone in the hall would help the girl. Others assumed that if an authority figure didn't move to help -- in this case, the professor -- then they didn't need to, either.

Later they claimed they knew all along that it was a hoax.

Sometimes people do step up. In the Massachusetts bar case, two men helped the victim as she staggered, mostly naked, from the bar. One of them, reliving the case earlier this month with The Herald News, said he picked up a rod and started after the men who were running from the bar to their cars.


In 2007, three female college soccer players said they saw a young girl on a bed in a room with a group of male baseball players. A ballplayer told them to mind their own business, the women told ABC News, but they broke down the door anyway and pulled the half-naked girl from the room. No charges were filed in the case. Prosecutors said there were too many witnesses who had too much to drink -- so they couldn't prove their case. But that spurred the women to continue speaking out.

"People always say, 'If I was there I would've done something,' " Burke said. "Would you really? Would you really have done something? We don't know."