Thursday, October 29, 2009

Richmond rape case

The recent Richmond High School rape case (article 2) has a number of disturbing qualities.  The short story is that a 15 year old girl left a dance at the school, met up with some people on the side of campus, and was brutally raped by 6-10 young men, while the whole incident was observed by something like a dozen other people. Particularly important is that no one at the scene called the police, and the grisly mess lasted for nearly 2 hours.

In addition to the facts of the case, a number of comments also grabbed my attention.  The perpetrators currently in custody are aged 21, 19, 17, 16, and 15 years old.  The 21 year old has not been charged yet as far as I know.  The 19 year old is apparently the main assailant.  The DA apparently will seek life in prison for him, as well as for the juveniles (to be tried as adults).  An investigator from the police department is quoted as saying
  "These suspects are monsters. And, I don't understand how this many people capable of such atrocious behavior could be in one place at one time."
Focusing on the non-participating witnesses first, the first thing that's been on my mind regarding this case is the seemingly similar case of Kitty Genovese
that will be well known to anyone who took Psychology 101.  There a woman was beaten to death in broad daylight on a busy New York City street.  Similarly, no one watching the violence escalate called the police.   After the initial name calling and sermons on how NYC is a den of thieves, psychologists went around asking witnesses why they didn't call the police.   They replied that they figured someone else had already called them.  This led to numerous studies on group behavior that corroborated the claims.  It's one of the reasons I think Psychology 101 is the most important courses in college:  If you are aware of your tendency, as a human being, not to act in group situations, you can overcome your natural response, and get something done.

This seems slightly different though, since due to the remote location, any witness could see what any other witness was doing, so it would probably be clear if someone had called the police or not.  I'm curious whether there were threats of physical violence to the crowd from the attackers if anyone alerted the police, or if it was something like a Roman Colosseum spectacle.  In Gangleader for a Day, minorities from the Robert Taylor homes just don't call the police, since the police are frequently abusive and infrequently get anything done there.  Perhaps something like this was at work.

The second thing that sticks in my mind is the immediate response of the DA that he will not only seek to try the minors as adults, but will seek life in prison for all 4.  Even the oldest (currently charged), at 19,
is depressingly young.  Now, I'd agree that they obviously pose a danger to society, and should spend time in prison.  But a 15 year old getting life?  It is possible that he is a young psychopath that will do nothing but rape and pillage as long as he's on the streets.   Yet I find that incredibly hard to believe.  The interesting thing to me is the quote.  Again
  "These suspects are monsters. And, I don't understand how this many people capable of such atrocious behavior could be in one place at one time."
Indeed.  It seems highly improbable that 6-10 sociopaths happen all to go to the same high school and happen to all be hanging out together after a dance.   (Though, on second thought, any gang would probably satisfy this description.)  I think it is important to figure out what was going on in their minds (e.g. peer pressure) while this was happening.  The fact that the area is impoverished and known for gang violence, also would seem to play some kind of role.  I hope the psychology department at Berkeley researches this crime as seriously as those researchers studying the Genovese case.

In Stumbling on Happiness, Dan Gilbert reports on research showing that, almost unbelievably, about half of the people involved in horribly traumatic experiences similar to this one (though indeed this must be near the top of the list of most horrendous crimes) are able to recover psychology from the trauma.  I pray that the victim of this tragedy is one of these resilient ones.

No comments:

Post a Comment