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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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Crime Prevention Insights from a Former Jewel Thief

George Feder was the “Houdini of Jewel Thieves” through the 60s and 70s until he was caught by the FBI and received a 15-year prison sentence. Now he works with law enforcement and is an advocate for crime prevention. Feder has the inside track to the criminal mind and can tell you exactly what a burglar looks for when they are looking to break into your residence.

The video below shows Feder demonstrating how he used to break into apartments. As he goes through his process, he offers subtle hints as to what you can do to make your home an unattractive target for other burglars.

Feder will also soon be contributing his experience and passion for crime prevention to this very blog. Look for his posts soon. In the mean time you can visit his website and follow him on Twitter and Facebook.

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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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Domestic Violence Statistics Not Low Enough

According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 552, 000 females, age 12 and older, experienced non-fatal violence from an intimate partner in 2008. In 2007, 1,640 females were killed by an intimate partner, making up 70% of all intimate partner homicides. And although the numbers of women killed by an intimate partner has declined in the last decade, I don’t know anyone who thinks these numbers are low enough.

To make things worse, the reach of domestic violence goes beyond the immediate victim. The Bureau of Justice Statistics reports that 38% of victims of domestic violence had children under the age of 12 living in the home. And of those children in the home, it is estimated that 60% directly witnessed the violence. (See full statistics from the BJS here.)

Societal Impediments

For some reason, our society, and many others across the globe, have an aversion to interfering in domestic violence incidents. Some people feel that it’s a family matter or that they have no business getting into a fight between spouses or family members. This attitude has even been reflected in law enforcement practice, waiting for a battered woman to press charges against an abuser before taking any legal action. But perhaps things are changing with a new program created by the Baltimore Police Department.

A New Way to Fight Domestic Violence

The Baltimore PD has created a new Family Crime Unit designed specifically to intervene in domestic violence situations early, before these situations descalate into serious injury or death. According to Peter Hermann, of the Baltimore Sun, the new unit has been modeled after the homicide division, in order to more aggressively act on domestic violence incidents and prevent further violence before it happens. And the unit is already seeing some success. For example, this year, Baltimore has only seen 4 domestic killings, as opposed to 13-14 in years previous. And this success comes at a time when the economy is down, traditionally a time when domestic violence rises. (Read about the extent of the program here.)

Their approach to domestic violence is something that needs to be modeled in other law enforcement agencies across the county. Domestic violence is NOT just a family matter. It affects us all. Be aware of the issues and become an active citizen in favor of a smarter, more aggressive domestic violence response unit for you local law enforcement agency.

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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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‘Zero Tolerance’ May Harm More Than it Helps

The camping utensil brought to school by Zachary Christie

Six-year-old first grader, Zachary Christie, was recently at the center of a debate over a school district policy when he brought a camping utensil to school. The tool looked like a pocket knife and contained a fork, spoon, can opener, and a small knife. For bringing a deadly weapon to school, Zachary was suspended for five days and was prohibited from returning to Downes Elementary School until after 45 days at an alternative school. Zach says he brought the tool to school so he could eat his pudding. (source)

The Christina School District, in Newark, Delaware, has a so-called “zero-tolerance” policy against bringing dangerous items to school, spurred mostly by safety concerns raised by Columbine and other school shootings. But after public outcry over the extreme sentence for a 6-year-old who wanted to eat pudding, the Christina School District decided to reexamine it’s harsh policy. “We need to recognize the cognitive level of these kids,” said school board member John Mackenzie. “We need to provide a little leeway.”

Political Rhetoric

“Zero-tolerance” is great political phrases. When a politician or a school board member up reelection uses it, they’re seen as “tough” on crime and someone who is protecting the public from all the bad people out in the world who want to harm them. But a one-size-fits-all approach to punishing criminals is rarely productive and can often be harmful to both the criminal and society.

Drug Policy

For example, ANY drug offense will bar the offender from receiving any future federal student aid money. This zero-tolerance policy means that any person convicted of possession of any amount of controlled substance can never receive federal loan or grant money to attend college. I realize that this punitive measure is meant as a deterrent to keep kids off drugs, but it also harms ex-drug users by denying them any help in getting an education and turning their lives around. On the other hand, if you are a child molester, rapist, or murderer, you can receive federal student aid without any problems.

Sex Offender Laws

In addition, sex offender residency restrictions are very popular for obvious reasons: no one wants a convicted sex offender living next door to them or next to a school or playground. However, overly harsh restriction laws also prevent former offenders from finding descent housing, pushing them to edges of society where their likelihood of re-offending is actually higher—as evidenced by the case of Philip Garrido. Offender residency restriction laws have also been used to keep sex offenders from attending church and receiving counseling, and, in Florida, has created a homeless sex offender camp underneath a bridge where over 100 registered sex offenders live, creating a public health and safety concern. These one-size-fits-all policies not only punish violent sex offenders like rapists and child molesters, but—in some states—punishes those who have urinated in public or had sex with their high school girlfriend after they turned 18.

Get Smarter

As citizens, we need to step back from zero-tolerance rhetoric and take a smarter approach to handling criminals in our society—not a “tougher” approach. Fortunately, the Christina School Board reversed its zero-tolerance policy and allowed for the age and cognitive ability of the perpetrator to be taken into account when assigning punishment. Now that Zach can go back to school, what has he learned from the whole experience? I’m sure he’s learned not to take a camping tool to school anymore, but how will this experience affect the way he views teachers, rules, law enforcement, and any other form of authority from now on? Will he see them as allies and protectors, or will he see them as vindictive enforcers who would rather punish instead of teach? For his sake and for ours, I hope it is the former.

Check out this video of the Christina School District debating the policy, as well as reactions from concerned parents:
Vodpod videos no longer available.

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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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Teens Sued over Obscene Facebook Page

Four Chicago teens are facing a defamation lawsuit over a fake Facebook page they created for a teammate. The four teens created the fake Facebook profile page using their victim’s real name and cell phone number. Once the profile was up, they proceeded to post sexually explicit and racist comments on it, appearing to come from their victim, who they also portrayed as gay. By the time the profile was deleted, the four teens had amassed 580 friends on the fake profile. The mother of the victim, who lobbied Facebook to delete the profile, is now suing the four teens for defamation and emotional stress.

I think we can all agree that this type of behavior is unacceptable and that the boys who did this should be punished in some way. However, who will actually pay the price for their behavior? Their parents. If these four boys are found guilty, their parents will be paying damages.

This example shows that it is not just the kids involved who are affected by cyberbulling—whole families can suffer as a result. This lawsuit highlights the importance of talking to your children about ethical online behavior. Many teens think that they can get away with anything under the cloak of anonymity that the internet provides, but they are wrong. In fact, there are many ways that your identity can be tracked down over the internet, and that’s just what happened to these boys.

As technology progresses, and people begin to carry their internet identity around with them through cyberspace, the illusion of anonymity will breaking down further and further. It is important to start educating your children while they are young about appropriate online behavior (for example, check out Woogi World, a social media environment built to teach elementary school age kids about ethical and safe online behavior). Remember, if your son or daughter is being the bully, you could be the one to pay.

Sources:

• http://ncpc.typepad.com/prevention_works_blog/2009/10/teenagers-and-young-adults-beware-of-crime-on-internetbased-communities.html
• http://law.rightpundits.com/?p=853
• http://mashable.com/2009/09/25/fake-facebook-profile/

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