Archive for Musicals.Net Musicals.Net |
| Mama Rose |
15 year old girl gang raped, onlookers laughedThis happened right near my school over the weekend:http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_13644237?source=most_viewed I mean, the fact that people just watched without doing anything... I kind of want to throw up. |
||||||
| Yakko |
And this is why people are sick...... | ||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
One of the more disgusting parts of this story is that they try to make it everyone's fault but the people who participated. Half of the article is people admitting that there should have been more security, that the lighting should have been better, etc. How about, plain and simple, it's no one else's fault that some lowlives decided to rape a teenager! God, hold people responsible for what they do. It's sickening.
Though I'm glad the article admitted that she had been drinking. While that doesn't make it her fault, part of the truth is that it would not have happened if she had kept herself safe, and that does not include being a fifteen year old girl not only walking down the street by herself at night, but turning into a dark alley and drinking "large amounts" of hard A. Hopefully this will serve as a warning to others who might put themselves in dangerous situations too. I honestly wonder whether there isn't more to the story. How she ended up getting to the scene of the crime is really suspect, especially since the source is an individual retelling a story heard from someone else, not an eyewitness (unacceptable in responsible journalism). She had to have had a falling out with her date and ran off, or been part of the group that decided to sneak away from the dance early, or something. What parent, when planning to pick their child up from an event, would say, "Go walking down the main street in the dark, and I'll find you somewhere along the way"? There's no way that's really what happened. |
||||||
| shakalakababy |
I'm unfortunately from that neck of the woods and it doesn't surprise me that much but it does make me very sad 
|
||||||
| Mama Rose |
She wasn't in a dark alleyway... and she may not have even had a date. She was raped in a patch of courtyard on the campus behind one of the buildings, the area where most kids go drink. | ||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
Fine, then substitute "secluded patch of courtyard" for "alleyway." Same diff. |
||||||
| Mama Rose |
Not really. She was on the campus. The fact that she was raped IN SCHOOL makes a pretty big difference. | ||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
The point is that it's the classic story of the worst case scenario happening when you allow yourself to become unsafe. If the place she went was secluded and hidden enough that people were able to consume alcohol there (at a high school with heightened security), then going there was obviously a bad choice. It's unfortunate that she has become a cautionary tale now, but hopefully others will learn from her mistake and not become victims as well. Let's take this opportunity to turn something horrible into a learning experience that can save other people, not nitpick over whether it was a dark corner of the courtyard behind a fence, or a dark alleyway. | ||||||
| Yakko |
Beagle has a good point there. | ||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
Beagle always has a good point. 
|
||||||
| Yakko |
Well the avitare is a valid point. | ||||||
| Matthew |
Very near to some of my family members. Not surprised by the news, but still vile. | ||||||
| Orestes Fasting |
But wait, guys! According to Marin Trujillo, the West Contra Costa Unified School District spokesman, "This dance itself was a successful event."
[source] In other words: Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?
I agree wholeheartedly, but I think that the whole "she was being unsafe" theme you devoted the rest of your post to is just another part of the blame game. The honest truth is that any people sick enough to gang-rape a half-unconscious teenager are probably also sick enough to gang-rape a stone cold sober teenager... and that if they beat her badly enough to send her to the hospital in critical condition, she would've been half-unconscious anyway without a drop of liquor in her body. What I think is being overlooked here is that the perpetrators and bystanders were also teenagers drinking. And they were not lone psychopaths, or an isolated gang of sickos, but a more-or-less randomly assembled group of students. Where the hell did a bunch of fifteen-year-olds learn that it's not only okay, but fun and amusing, to rape a girl going home from a dance? Something is so incredibly wrong there. All too often the message of "Don't drink, because it will be easier for people to take advantage of you, and you might end up raped" gets targeted to girls. Where is the corresponding message of "Don't drink, because you'll more easily go along with stupid sh*t you'll regret, and you might end up a rapist?" Clearly in a situation where twenty people are standing around laughing and joining in the assault of some poor girl off the street, the problem is not that she was a target, the problem is that the participants either thought raping a fifteen-year-old girl would be fun, or were drunk enough to get dragged into it by the instigators. |
||||||
| Dax |
Stories like this always make me consider the idea of something punitive to those simply watching...
|
||||||
| Felix Felicis |
Mercifully there is generally no liability for omission to act. Imagine how dreadful it would be were that not the case. |
||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
No, in fact I made it clear in my post that it isn't about blaming her. It's about using this as an opportunity to urge other teens to make good choices.
Rap music. (Though we don't know that these were fellow fifteen-year-olds.) |
||||||
| Orestes Fasting |
No, you didn't place the blame directly on her. But making it about "good choices" and making her an unfortunate example--aside from being kind of a tacky thing to pin on someone who's already suffered enough--is part of the blame game. Or at least part of the process of trying to rationalize something horrific by looking at all the ways it "could have been prevented," when really the only way it could've been prevented is if a bunch of scumbags hadn't decided to gang-rape a classmate.
And that's pretty much what you said in your first paragraph, which is why I find it odd that the rest of the post was about how it wouldn't have happened if she hadn't been drinking. Yeah, there could've been more lighting and better security and she could've been sober. But if it had been broad daylight and the exact same band of scumbags--who were probably in the middle of a drunken machismo pissing contest and dragging the bystanders along with them--had come across a sober Catholic schoolgirl who knew not to take candy or booze from strangers, they would still have been able to overpower her, and the bystanders would still have stood around laughing, and we would be talking about how she shouldn't have been wearing that sexy Catholic school uniform in such a bad neighborhood.
At least one of the suspects who've been apprehended so far is fifteen. |
||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
So it still would have happened if she had not gone behind the fence with them and gotten drunk? It's obvious that you have a gender-related agenda, so I'm not going to waste my time trying to reason with you while you insist on seeing a real-world crisis in black and white. |
||||||
| Dax |
Illuminate...Paint me a picture...please. (No, not being facetious here) Had she been younger... California law makes it illegal not to report a witnessed crime against a child, but the law applies only to cases in which the child is 14 or younger.
|
||||||
| Vanessa20 |
Honestly, 20 witnesses who either did nothing or laughed?Human nature sucks. |
||||||
| Felix Felicis |
The classic example is if you see a child drowning in a pond - you are under no legal duty to help that child. You can stand, laughing, watching the poor little tinker die, and you will not be guilty of murder. Because you have omitted to act, rather than acted, you are not liable. In this case, the scumbags who stood around watching are morally reprehensible, but sadly were fully within their rights not to try and help. If we did have omissions liability, we would be under all kinds of duties to act, and autonomy would be severly restricted. |
||||||
| High-baritonne |
Thank God I live in Norway, where it is illegal not to take action. Well, you also get punished for killing in defense and never get to function with society again, but hey, win some and lose some. | ||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
Surely your omission liability is limited to some extent, though. It would be impossible to leave your house and walk around if you were responsible for righting every wrong you happened to encounter. | ||||||
| High-baritonne |
Yes of course! But if you see a car accident you are obliged to call for assistance and stay until the help arrives, or if you see someone getting raped, killed, robbed, you are to call for police. Not doing so is illegal and will get you a nice little fine. | ||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
See, in American culture, most people would draw the line of moral obligation somewhere between the car accident and the rape. Unless the car is one fire and there's a little old lady crawling away with one leg severed, it's someone else's inconvenience and while stopping to help would be nice, it's not your problem. |
||||||
| High-baritonne |
God bless America!
It is at least a free country! |
||||||
| Felix Felicis |
I would have hoped that the moral obligation would not be drawn there, but that the obligation to act might be. |
||||||
| Dax |
I'm not seeing this.. Explain. 
|
||||||
| Felix Felicis |
When it comes to omissions liability, the core argument is between the autonomy principle and the welfare principle. If you don't have to save the drowning child, you have your autonomy and can go and do whatever you please. However, society suffers. If you do have to take action, your freedom at that moment is gone and millions of possibilities are taken away from you and you only have one option - save the child. Society is glad of your interference to save the child, but your own personal freedom has been curtailed. Even were general omissions liability to be introduced, it would be incredibly hard to draw the line as to where and when one would be obliged to act. There are millions of wrongs going on at any given moment in the world - would one be liable to prosecution if one did not actuvely go and try to fix them? |
||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
I am I, Beagle. | ||||||
| Orestes Fasting |
What, did the Catholic schoolgirl joke offend you or something? FFS, Beagle, we've nearly come to blows over similar topics in the past, each of us knows the other has a gender-related agenda. On the occasions when we weren't sticking our fingers in our ears going "I'm not listening to the stinky [feminazi/men's rights advocate]," we've managed to find common ground--especially when talking about how sexism screws up and screws over men as well as women. Clearly we are coming at this from different opinions, most notably about whether or not it's utterly tacky to hold up the victim as an example of "see, this is what can happen to you if you act stupid." But since, judging by your original post, we seem to be in at least partial agreement that there needs to be more focus on the perpetrators' behavior... I thought we could at least get a discussion out of it, if not end up skipping happily arm-in-arm through fields of violets. If you'd rather stick your fingers in your ears, by all means mentally replace this post with "All men are rapists and all women are irreproachable, RAAA SMASH THE PATRIARCHY." |
||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
I don't see you acknowledging the truth that comes through in my point, for your own part. If you're being reasonable and open to what I say, you really must admit that she made a royally bad choice, without which she would not have been in a situation to be victimized.
Besides, while everyone knows we each have an agenda for the empowerment of our sex, mine is not part of my argument (unless you're prepared to insist that the reason I point out that people must take precautions to keep themselves safe is because I support the rapists and their actions and I don't think highly enough of men to say that they can't contain themselves if given the chance). |
||||||
| shakalakababy |
I'm so glad this made it to the national news.
So much terrible stuff happens here all the time that never even makes it to local news, I'm glad this at least is getting some attention. I think people need to remember that this girl was only 15. That is so young, and yes she should've had better judgement but underage drinking is obviously something many kids that age are going to try. That doesn't mean she should have to face the ordeal she did. I would say probably half the kids there were drunk. She just happened to be one of the unlucky ones. If anything the school should've had better security. Yeah they had security in the gym but they should have security around the whole campus, it's not that big, it really would not take that much more effort. |
||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
But why would they secure areas where the kids aren't supposed to be in the first place? That doesn't make sense. It's just more coulda shoulda woulda, as if the victim were helpless to take care of herself and the rapists were right to attack her. (For that matter, who has homecoming at the school? We always did it up right and got a ballroom. But I digress.) |
||||||
| teapot |
From both a liability standpoint and a practical standpoint, you do not secure areas because kids are supposed to be there, you secure areas that might present an opportunity for danger. And this school is not in some upper middle class dreamland... homecoming at the auditorium/gym is a greater likelihood in the real world. |
||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
Well when we would have smaller dances like tolo or morp at the school, we didn't buckle the whole campus down. We didn't even have security policing the whole unused building. We knew the boundaries and stayed within them - and did our drinking elsewhere.
I think "dreamland" is a little bit of an exaggeration for getting a nice place to hold the biggest dance of the year. |
||||||
| Mungojerrie_rt |
Normally it is the parents of the child (who is often dead as a result of bad choices) on national television calling for others to learn from their child's mistake. |
||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
In this case, not until after they have given suing the school a shot first, I'm sure. Unfortunately. | ||||||
| LadyOfTheLake |
Homecoming is generally held at the school. Prom would be the 'biggest dance of the year,' and is normally held off-campus |
||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
Damn, really? Homecoming and prom were always at the convention center, home of the city's best ballrooms. I'm sure we had more fun. The only time we've ever broken that was once when the seniors accidentally misbudgeted, and had to have homecoming at the armory. Even that was considered humiliating. We would have died if it was in the gym.
I gotta say homecoming is bigger than prom, though. The whole school goes, a opposed to prom where underclassmen can only go if a junior or senior asks them. Prom is more special for those who didn't get asked in previous years, but it's smaller. |
||||||
| LadyOfTheLake |
Ours is held in our cafeteria; that way, money can be saved to have a bigger and better prom. | ||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
Sometimes we had midwinter in the cafeteria depending on how much NHS wanted to spend on it. | ||||||
| SmallTownIngenue |
Wow you guys are lucky....my high school's prom is always in a gym. With the after party at a bowling alley. Classy. | ||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
The bowling sounds fun though. We didn't have any official after party, that was just at whoever's house. | ||||||
| Dax |
Wow... That is so far out there...that I still don't see it. There is no way my freedom has been reduced in your example. Such an action as saving a child would have the opposite effect. But then maybe I don't see it because I live with such laws anyway?
|
||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
Your freedom is reduced in that scenario because you weren't just presented with the option of lending a helping hand, but instead had it forced upon you - your day had to grind to a full stop when something was dumped on your plate and it was either put your own life on hold to get involved, or go to jail. Though maybe it's not a great example since anyone with an iota of compassion would save the drowning child, which makes it hard to understand opposition to it. A better example might be the car accident - no one is going to die, but people do need assistance - while some may choose to pull over and help, others may be late for work, or not comfortable becoming vulnerable to a stranger, or just plain not give a damn, so why should someone else's inconvenience be legally binding on an outsider who has nothing to do with it? Speaking only from the perspective of a United States citizen living in a free country, you can't oblige me under penalty of law to be a good Samaratin. That's my choice to make if I wish. |
||||||
| Mungojerrie_rt |
But you don't know if it is life threatening unless you stop to look. The law really just requires you to make sure an ambulance is on the way. |
||||||
| wtfchuck |
Sorry, but there is OT and there is OT.
When I'm browsing the Hot Topics of a musicals forum, I don't really want to hear about gang-rape. |
||||||
| Felix Felicis |
It's hardly out there (unless you're now being facetious) - it's the fundamental debate at the centre of omissions liability... Even just in terms of numbers: when we prohibit an act, we are saying, "You cannot do this one thing, but there are still squillions of other things you can go and do." If we prohibit an omission, we are saying, "Here is one thing you have to do, and a squillion things you cannot do at that moment." Beagle's got it about right. |
||||||
| actor |
Re: Honestly, 20 witnesses who either did nothing or laughed
Why do people keep saying stuff like this? Not everyone's like that lol |
||||||
| hyperactress23 |
From what I've seen (both around here and from cousins who live elsewhere), prom is always the biggest dance of the year. Yes, homecoming is bigger. But prom is where people seem to go all out. Out of the upperclassmen, more go to prom than homecoming. Girls spend much more money on prom dresses than homecoming dresses. Homecoming is usually somewhere on campus and well-decorated; prom is usually somewhere off campus and extravagantly decorated. Anyway, that was off-topic. Return to the gang rape conversation. |
||||||
| The Very Angry Woman |
You can donate to her and/or send well-wishes: http://sfist.com/2009/10/29/friend_of_gang_rape_victim_slams_sc.php | ||||||
| Beagle On Stage |
I wish the donation / well-wishing system had been set up WITHOUT the slamming / blasting. It makes this friend look petulant and vengeful, which indirectly makes the victim seem less sympathetic. |
||||||
| Dax |
Setting aside the fact that there are laws regarding this... What do you think will happen if you make the wrong choice? Even if I were dealing with a person who has little conscience, in this day and age where your face and identity will be known, how will such a person be regarded and subsequently treated by those aorund him?
I don't believe I stated that there is only one thing a person can do unless you're calling that one thing an action. I'm not saying go in and break some heads and play the hero. I am asking why can't you simply call the freaking police? Good God...(secularly speaking) I'm glad I only hang around those that got my back...
|
||||||
| Felix Felicis |
You can call the freaking police. The point is that you don't have to. |
||||||
| kozafluitmusique |
Sorry I didn't post sooner, but I feel so bad for the fifteen year old. That's horrible people laughed. People can be so cruel. | ||||||
| Dax |
That would depend now woudn't it? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omission_(criminal_law)] (Omission's Law as it applies in the UK) 
|
||||||
| Felix Felicis |
No. I know UK Omissions law - it's what I'm studying. You do not have to do anything in that situation. |
||||||
| Mama Rose |
The girl made a statement a few days ago:
"Violence is always a wrong choice. We realize people are angry about this, but let the anger cause change; change that is necessary to keep our children, our neighbors and our friends safe. We thank everyone for their love, support and ongoing prayers." I dunno. It seems like her parents wrote that to me. Just doesn't sound like the kind of thing that a 15-year-old girl who's just been raped would say. |