Don’t Be a Bystander

Berger/AP

Last week, outside of a homecoming dance held at Richmond High School, in Richmond, Calif., a 15-year-old girl was gang raped and sexually assaulted for over 2 hours by a handful of young men while onlookers watched. It was not until one student overheard others bragging about it at the dance that the police were called to the scene. When they arrived, they found the young woman half-naked near a picnic table, less than a block from the entrance to the school dance. (source)

Five suspects have now been charged in the rape and beating of the girl. But what is more astounding is that roughly 12-20 people (according to accounts) witnessed the gang rape over the 2-hour span and did absolutely nothing about it. In fact, some took pictures with their cell phones.

“She was raped, beaten, robbed and dehumanized by several suspects who were obviously OK enough with it to behave that way in each other’s presence. What makes it even more disturbing is the presence of others. People came by, saw what was happening and failed to report it.” — Richmond Police Lt. Mark Gagan (source)

The Bystander Effect

Some psychologists ascribe the behavior of the onlookers to “The Bystander Effect.” According to studies, individuals are less likely to intervene in an emergency/crisis if there are other people around:

“When something unusual happens, we look to others to figure out how we should react. If we see other people doing nothing, we usually conclude that nothing should be done. The problem occurs when everybody assumes the same thing, a phenomenon that psychologists call ‘pluralistic ignorance.’” (source)

That makes us all sound like mindless animals, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, many studies have found that this is the case, more often than not.

Stand Up. Say Something. Call 911.

It took over 2 hours for someone to call police to the rescue of this teen girl. In the recent case of Phillip Garrido, all his neighbors thought he was creepy and probably up to something illegal. But because no one was willing to push the matter, Jaycee Duggard was imprisoned in his backyard for 18 years.

We might think it is uncomfortable to intervene in a domestic dispute. Or we might think that someone else will call 911. We may even fear for our own safety if we witness the victimization of another. But studies have shown that when people know about the Bystander Effect, they are less likely to sit idly by while someone else is in trouble.

So consider this your education. Don’t be a victim of the Bystander Effect. When you see someone in trouble, being assaulted or victimized; stand up, say something, and call the police. You may prevent this type of atrocious act from happing to another teen girl outside a high-school dance.

For other perspectives on this case:
Rape: America’s Least Reported Crime
Bystanders No More: Teaching Kids to Respond to Violent Crime
Friend of Gang Rape Victim Blasts School Officials Over Safety
Richmond High Rape—What Do We Do With This?

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Halloween Safety Myths

For good reason, Halloween strikes fear into the hearts of parents everywhere. Not only is there the threat of ghosts and ghouls, but it’s the one night of the year when we send our children out to wander the streets of our cities and towns to beg candy from complete strangers. Which is, pretty much, the exact opposite of what we try and teach them the other 364 days of the year.

Halloween also has a reputation for being a night, more than others, when children are preyed upon by twisted individuals who what to poison their candy and kidnap them. It’s easy to see how these fears have arisen. Given the creepiness of the holiday along with the anonymity of costumed adults, walks in the dark, and bags full of candy from strangers, it’s not surprising that parents have put barriers in place to prevent crime against their children on this night.

However, two specific fears have been allowed to fester in the minds of concerned parents for years, but have no actual basis in reality. In order to truly keep your children safe on Halloween, its best to dispel the myths and deal with the real threats of the holiday.

Poison Candy

For years, news media and community groups have counseled parents to vigorously inspect their children’s candy for razor blades, pins, or poison. (As well, shortly after 9/11 parents were told to inspect candy for Anthrax.) But you will be hard pressed to find a single case of Halloween candy poisoning, let alone candy laced with razor blades or pins. In fact, there has never been a recorded case of mass Halloween candy poisoning.

There was a case in 1974, where a father slipped a cyanide-laced Pixie stick into his son’s trick-or-treating bag. The son died, but the father was found guilty of murder and executed for his crime. So, according to precedent, Halloween candy from strangers is statistically safer than candy from family and friends. (For more on this myth, click here.)

Child Molesters

In general, most people are afraid of sex offenders and for good reason. Sex offender residency laws are popular precisely because no one wants to associate with a known rapist or raise their children next door to a child molester. However, there is a sense that child molesters pose a greater threat on Halloween than on any other day of the year. Maybe it’s the hordes of children knocking on neighborhood doors that gets us thinking about sex offenders in the area, but in reality sex crimes against children have never increased on Halloween. Actually, sex crimes against children are traditionally higher during summer months, and tend to decrease as the weather gets cooler.

Real Threats

By no means is Halloween the safest holiday of the year or the most crime free. Children are still at risk for getting lost or injuring themselves while walking around a dark neighborhood in a cumbersome costume. Make sure that your children are accompanied by an adult at all times—preferably with a flashlight. Also, make sure your children know basic traffic safety rules. Besides preventing them from eating too much candy, the best thing you can do for your children on Halloween is to be with them and make sure they have fun.

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Halloween Safety Tips

Late last week I posted on Halloween safety myths about poison candy and sex offenders, but now that all-hallows’-eve is approaching, it might also be good to go over some basic Halloween safety tips that will help you and your children have a fun time this Saturday night.

Set Clear Rules

As parents it’s important to set clear rules and expectations for your children on Halloween night.

• Set a clear curfew
• Agree on a trick-or-treating route so you will know where your children are
• Know what parties and places your children will be

Tricks

Halloween seems to be the one time of year that good kids think it’s okay to do bad things. Talk to your children about the consequences of vandalism, graffiti, theft, or destruction of property. Smashing pumpkins, stealing candy from smaller children, egging houses/cars, and other destructive acts may seem harmless to inexperienced kids, but they could have far-reaching consequences, emotionally for the victims and legally for the perpetrators. Keep your children out of trouble by clearly letting them know about the consequences of their actions.

Costumes

It’s fun to dress up on Halloween, but some costumes can present safety hazards if they are overly cumbersome, awkward, or restrict a child’s vision. These costumes can present a tripping hazard or prevent children from seeing well enough to avoid dangerous objects in the dark. No child wants to sprain an ankle on Halloween and go home early without collecting all the candy booty they can. As well, make sure that any props (fake knives, swords, sticks, etc.) the children carry are soft or pliable enough to not cause injury if they are fallen upon.

Image courtesy of the US Comsumer Product Safety Commision

Safety

Because so many children and families will be out in the dark on Halloween night, basic safety tips are even more important.

• Make sure younger children are always accompanied by an adult or teenaged sibling with a flashlight
• Look both ways before you cross the street
• Wear reflective clothing or carry a glow stick to alert drivers to your presence

Overall, it’s simply important to make sure that you and your children exercise good judgment and follow basic safe guidelines, so you can all have a good time.

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Net Cetera: Chatting With Kids About Being Online

As parents, it can often be hard to keep up with your children’s internet usage, let alone the latest websites, online interactive tools, or technologies. Now OnGuard Online has created a great resource for parents that gives an overview of specific technologies and ways to talk to your kids about their online activities, titled, Net Cetera: Chatting With Kids About Being Online. The guide is available for free online download, or you can order a free physical copy of the guide as well as reprint it, give it away, or reuse the material in any way that is most useful to you.

Download a free copy here.

Order a free copy here.

(Thanks to iKeepSafe for the tip)

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Children’s Exposure to Violence: A Comprehensive National Survey

The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention just released their study, Children’s Exposure to Violence: A Comprehensive National Survey. The study included over 4,500 juveniles age 17 and younger and covered topics from bullying, to child maltreatment, to sexual victimization. Here are some interesting findings:

• Children 7-10 years old are the most likely to experience physical assault/bullying from siblings and peers
• Nearly 1 in 10 surveyed had been sexually victimized, and nearly 20% of all girls are sexually victimized by the time they are 17
• 1 in 5 children suffer maltreatment (physical abuse, neglect, emotional abuse, and more) by the time they are 17
  Children 10-13 are at the highest risk for kidnapping than any other age group
• Overall, adolescents age 14-17 are at the highest risk for witnessing or being the victim of physical abuse and sexual victimization of all types

Any violence against children is too much violence against children. Talk to your kids about what they can do to protect themselves from physical, sexual, and emotional abuse. Foster a relationship with your children that is open and honest, where they can feel safe talking to you about these issues. Overall, as adults and parents, we need to be the examples for our children. If we are physically, verbally, and emotionally abusive to them or others—or let abuse we see go unreported—they will learn from us.

Let’s all work together to stop violence against children. Here’s one organization that is trying to help: www.darkness2light.org. They have great resources for parents for raising awareness and combating child sexual abuse.

Read the entire results of the study here: http://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/ojjdp/227744.pdf

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Preventing Child Abuse Through Education

The Future of Children, a collaboration between Princeton and the Brookings Institute, publishes a semi-annual journal focused on studies and issues regarding children and youth: challenges, concerns, trends, etc. This Fall’s issue dedicates its entire issue to preventing child abuse. The eight articles published this month cover issues like the effect of community efforts in preventing child abuse, preventing abuse through parent training, drug treatment, child protective services, and more.

To get a good understanding of current research regarding child abuse and prevention, you can download and read the entire journal for free here: http://www.futureofchildren.org/futureofchildren/publications/journals/journal_details/index.xml?journalid=71

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Pledge to Stop Distracted Driving

Although many states have created laws restricting or banning the use of cell phones, traffic fatalities related to cell phone use still kill hundreds of people each year and leave thousands of others injured—sometimes for life. Safe Kids USA, a non-profit agency dedicated to reducing accidental childhood injury through education, has created a pledge to stop distracted driving.

When you sign the pledge, you agree to stop talking or testing while driving, as well as any other activity that would divert your attention from the road while driving. The less people who drive distracted, the less accidents will occur. And that means saving hundreds of lives and preventing thousands of injuries.

Click here for more information and to sign the pledge.

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Don’t Ignore Domestic Violence

The Galveston County Daily News recently published a story about offering help to victims of domestic violence. Dr. Jeff Temple, a professor at the University of Texas, asks these questions:

If you witnessed someone breaking into your neighbor’s house, would you call the police?

What if you saw someone stealing the neighbor’s car? How about if you saw your neighbor hit his wife?

This last question might be a bit more difficult to answer, but it shouldn’t be.

Many people are afraid to get involved in instances of domestic abuse. Some think it is a personal matter and they shouldn’t get involved in anyone’s private business. But Dr. Temple says that kind of thinking is wrong:

Domestic violence is not a private matter; it is a severe and pervasive public health concern that demands the same diligence as other problems you might encounter in your neighborhood.

A marriage license is not a license to hit. If you witness an incident of domestic violence, call the police.

Assault is assault no matter how you slice it. Just because it occurs between intimate partners does not mean we can look the other way.

If you know someone who is involved in an abuse relationship, offer specific help. Let them know where they can go, what numbers to call, what websites to go to, and who they can turn to for help. They may not want your help, but if you offer it, then they will know who they can come to when they are ready to get help.

Read Temple’s full article here: http://www.galvestondailynews.com/story.lasso?ewcd=6d157091e4add50c

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The 25 Safest Colleges in America

Brigham Young University #17 of the 25 safest colleges in America

I wish I had the time to put something like this together, but because I am so busy, the Daily Beast decided to put this list together for me. They compiled a list of colleges around the country that had more than 6,000 students enrolled and had some type of on-campus housing. Not surprisingly, the safest colleges tend to be smaller (under 15,000 students), and many tend to be rural (although there are quiet a few urban New York colleges on the list). Case in point: the number 1 safest college is The New York Institute of Technology (11,831 students). The biggest school in the top 25: Texas A&M (46,542 students).

For the full story and the complete list: http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-09-24/the-top-25-safest-colleges/

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Cops vs. Skateboarders: Issues in Property and Safety

Officer Rivieri, the officer featured in the video, was sued by the parents of the boy he attacked, but the case was recently thrown out of court in favor of Rivieri. But he may face department disciplinary action.

I recently saw this video of a Baltimore police officer yelling at and physically subduing a 14-year-old skateboarder. The video was posted in February 2008 and has been viewed on YouTube over 3 million times. But other than being popular, this video is not unique. A quick search on YouTube brings up a whole host of videos documenting the clashes between law enforcement and skateboarders, and these clashes have been taking place for as long as skateboarders have been on the streets. Sometimes it seems that skateboarders and cops are destined to be locked in an eternal battle over property, safety, and miscommunication.

As a parent, you want to make sure that your children are safe, but you also want to give them the freedom to pursue what they enjoy in life. There are a few main issues involved in skater/law enforcement clashes that might help us to better steer our skateboarding children away from confrontations with police.

Property Concerns

Most of the time, when police confront skaters it’s over issues involving private or public property. Some private property owners do not want skaters on their property, in front of their store, in their parking lot, etc., because they see skaters as a injury liability, and the same goes for public property. If a skater falls and seriously injures him or herself in or around private or public property, the owner or the city could be liable for that injury. To avoid being sued by a skater’s parents over their child’s high-injury-risk behavior, the city or private property owners deter skaters from practicing on the

Example of a waxed curb

property through “No Skateboarding” signs and law enforcement patrols. As well, if a skater is caught skating on private property he or she could be charged with trespassing.

In addition to simple trespassing and the risk of potential injury, skaters often participate in defacing or damaging public and private property. Skaters use city features to do tricks. Objects like handrails, benches, stairs, curbs, or other concrete or metal structures can be damaged by skaters who use them to grind on, jump off, and jump onto. As well, most cities view the use of wax on concrete features as defacing public property, akin to graffiti. This damage costs the city money to fix, so it seems logical that they would want to keep skaters from damaging these features.

Public Nuisance

Concerns over property are not the only reason business owners and law enforcement don’t want skaters in certain areas. Because skateboarding is a very physical sport, not only does it pose an injury risk to skaters, but to other citizens as well. Not landing a jump or not having control of one’s board could cause skaters to run into other citizens in the immediate area, causing them injury. Depending on where the skating is happening and at what time, this can be a big concern for business owners who don’t want their customers hassled by skaters and law enforcement who want to keep citizens safe.

Skater fashion

But beyond safety, many business owners don’t want skaters around simply because they do not have the image the business is trying to convey. In general, skateboarding is not only a sport but a fashion style that may include saggy pants, long hair, ripped clothing, and more. A business owner may be averse to letting these perceived shady characters skate on their property. And although, technically, only the fashion police can arrest you for looking grungy, law enforcement officers also want public places to look nice, so trying to persuade skaters to leave those areas might be viewed as a small-scale public beautification project.

Physical Threats

Although law enforcement has many reasons to enforce property and safety laws, that does not always mean they do so in an appropriate way. As evidenced in the video mentioned above, some officers will use force when they perceive that a citizen is being disrespectful or will not comply with verbal warnings. As well, law enforcement officers face potentially dangerous situations everyday and encounter a lot of criticism from the public and the media. Law enforcement is a high-stress job, and skaters who talk back, make off-color remarks, or don’t respect the law way be seen as a threat even if they pose no immediate physical threat at all.

Avoiding Police Confrontation

As a parent, it’s important to let your child know that law enforcement officers are mainly concerned with safety and property issues when it comes to skateboarders. Here are some thing to avoid:

• Avoid skating on private or public property that explicitly states “No Skateboarding.”
• Don’t damage property either by grinding on it or waxing it.
• Show respect for law enforcement—even if you think they are in the wrong—showing respect will help avoid potentially dangerous confrontations. If the officer really is in the wrong, file a complaint. An officer who receives multiple complaints raises a red flag for that officer’s superior.

Skate park

In areas where a skate park is available, help your child make use of it, so they can avoid confrontation with police. If you don’t have a skate park in your area, lobby your city council to build one and point out that creating such a park will reduce crime and concentrate skaters into one area. Overall, just keep in mind that police are not out to “get” your skateboarding son or daughter. They are just trying to keep your city safe and clean. If you let your child know what officers are most concerned about, you may help them to avoid potentially dangerous situations in the future and skate safety.

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