On the night of October 23, 2009, a 15-year-old girl in Richmond, California, was brutally assaulted by as many as seven young men between the ages of 15 and 20.<\/p>\n
One policeman called the events of that night a \u201cbarbaric act\u201d and \u201cone of the most disturbing crimes in my 15 years as a police officer.\u201d<\/p>\n
What disturbed him wasn\u2019t only the overt criminal acts but the response \u2014 or more precisely, the lack of a response \u2014 of those in a position to help.<\/p>\n
According to the police, the victim had left a dance at Richmond High School and was in the school\u2019s courtyard when she was gang-raped. As heinous as this crime was, what made it a national story was that approximately 20 kids witnessed the attack and did nothing. Nothing.<\/p>\n
Actually, it was worse than that. As word spread about the attack, people came to check it out. There are reports that some of the bystanders took pictures of the assault with their cell phone cameras instead of calling for help. Others laughed and a few even joined in the attack.<\/p>\n
No sooner had police found the victim, semi-conscious under a bench, than attention focused on the behavior of the crowd. Comparisons were made to the 1964 murder of Kitty Genovese in New York, in which her neighbors supposedly ignored her cries for help because they didn\u2019t want to get involved.<\/p>\n
While how many of Genovese\u2019s neighbors actually heard her cries for help is in dispute, there are no such doubts in this case.<\/p>\n
So why didn\u2019t anyone do something to help? An obvious factor is fear. Richmond, California, has been described as \u201cone of the nation\u2019s most dangerous cities,\u201d and its murder rate is higher than Oakland\u2019s or Los Angeles\u2019. The school even recently approved the use of surveillance cameras following a series of violent crimes on campus.<\/p>\n
In this setting, people have reason to believe that authorities cannot protect them and, thus, getting involved will put them at risk.<\/p>\n
Even so, many people live in dangerous neighborhoods where \u201csnitching\u201d is dangerous, but they don\u2019t gather to watch another person being brutalized, much less take photos or laugh. After all, the attack ended when people down the street from the school learned what was happening and called the police.<\/p>\n
The response that shocked the nation speaks to an indifference to the well-being of others among some of our children. Instead of empathy, these young people showed apathy \u2014 and, as one observer said, \u201ca total indifference to [behavior], customs, mores, and sensibilities,\u201d the things we associate with being civilized.<\/p>\n
What happened in Richmond, California, is an unsettling reminder that the standards that make a good society possible cannot be taken for granted. It doesn\u2019t take much to set them aside. That\u2019s why those standards and the beliefs that make them possible must be taught and renewed continuously.<\/p>\n
As one Oakland pastor wrote, what happened on October 23rd \u201cis reflective of a societal breakdown that is not limited to the Richmond city limits.\u201d<\/p>\n
And that\u2019s what should disturb us the most.<\/p>\n
________<\/p>\n
Copyright (c) 2009 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. “BreakPoint with Chuck Colson” is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On the night of October 23, 2009, a 15-year-old girl in Richmond, California, was brutally assaulted by as many as seven young men between the ages of 15 and 20. One policeman called the events of that night a \u201cbarbaric act\u201d and \u201cone of the most disturbing crimes in my 15 years as a police […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3513,3699,1758,550,1348,1088,5001,1154,5146],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7260"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7260"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7260\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.churchedge.com\/illustrations\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}