On October 27th, 2009 a 15 year old girl went to her high school’s homecoming dance. While the dance was taking place in side the gym approximately 10 men gang-raped her for 2 and a half hours. After a while the crowd started to grow to about 20 people watching this happen. No one went to tell the security guard or the policeman on campus at the time. Earlier on the assistant principal looked out his office window and saw 12 to 15 men sitting near the scene (none who appeared to be a teenager) and he didn’t call the police or alert anyone. He returned to his job and ignored them.
This is a perfect example of the bystander effect.
My questions would be
1) What initiated this hostile event?
2) How come no one came to aid this girl? Where were her friends?
3) What made everyone think that it was okay not to do anything about this problem?
An absolutely tragic event; and clearly an illustration of the by-stander effect.
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