Police: As many as 20 present at gang rape outside school dance

[CZBZ]

Police: As many as 20 present at gang rape outside school dance

October 28, 2009 9:03 a.m. EDT

Richmond, California (CNN) -- Investigators say as many as 20 people were involved in or stood and watched the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl outside a California high school homecoming dance Saturday night.

Police posted a $20,000 reward Tuesday for anyone who comes to them with information that helps arrest and convict those involved in what authorities describe as a 2½-hour assault on the Richmond High School campus in suburban San Francisco.

Two teenage suspects have been jailed, but more arrests, as many as 20 total, are expected, according to a police detective.

"We will be making arrests continually as we develop probable cause," said Richmond Police Lt. Mark Gagan. "With this number of people implicated in the incident we're going to be making arrests on an ongoing basis."

As many as 10 people were involved in the assault in a dimly lighted back alley at the school, while another 10 people watched without calling 911 to report it, police said.
A 1999 California law makes it illegal not to report a witnessed crime against a child, but the law applies only to children 14 and under.

"We do not have the ability to arrest people who witnessed the crime and did nothing," Gagan said. "The law can be very rigid. We don't have the authority to make an arrest."

Charles Ramsey, a member of the Richmond school board, said the school district bears some responsibility for the attack. School administrators and police apparently weren't watching the area as they should have, Ramsey said.

The school said it would hold a safety meeting for parents and students Wednesday evening to address the assault.

The victim was found unconscious under a bench shortly before midnight Saturday, after police received a call from someone in the area who had overheard people at the assault scene "reminiscing about the incident," Richmond Police Lt. Mark Gagan said.

The girl was flown by helicopter to a hospital where she was admitted in critical condition. She was in stable condition Tuesday, police said.

Investigators canvassed the community with fliers, which included the reward offer, hoping to identify more suspects Tuesday.

On site videos linked to news story: http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/27/california.gang.rape.investigation/index.html

[CZBZ]

The reason I posted this horrifying story is because it says so much about our kids' sense of Unreality...maybe the result of too many violent computer games, television, movies, resulting in dissociation from themselves? Did those kids who watched her being raped by numerous boys, realize she was a human being and not a digitized animated character in a computer game???

I am also disturbed by the dehumanization of young women as sexual objects. Just last night, after posting this news story, I watched a commercial that sent shock waves through my body and not because it was sexually graphic, but because it was NOT overtly sexually graphic. maybe some of you can remember what product was being marketed but the scenario is in a classroom with an older woman and a young boy. He gives her something to eat (gum???) and she's carried away with the juiciness as she stares in his eyes and he in hers. Then her son walks in on the two of them masticating their way to orgasm and shouts 'Mom!!'

My nephew was watching the commercial with me and said, "what was that all about? I don't get it."

Whether he did or not, he wouldn't tell me most likely...but I certainly 'got' the sexual overtones and ya know, it was so so wrong on so so many levels that I couldn't believe my own eyes. Is this what our culture has come down to? (No pun intended.) Seriously, we ought be holding our media accountable...just the past two weeks, two women have been arrested for having sex with their students. And yet, some gum product is desensitizing us to the immorality and destruction of women having sex with students??

Some days, I want to smash my television set...then i get in my car and while driving down the freeway, am confronted with a giant billboard objectifying women's breasts as a playground for two (selling breast augmentation). Or I turn on the radio and listen to a song that 'objectifies' women by calling them 'Ho's". What's really disturbing is that women do this to themselves, too. And to one another.

I can't stand the way our culture is today. Take me away, Calgon.

See? Commercials have become such a part of our lives that we even use their slogans as cliches.

I watched a documentary about rape in Africa that still haunts me...the comments by the rapists in the army sent chills down my spine. They felt ENTITLED to be sexually gratified by any woman and if she refused to comply with their sexual advances, they raped her. Because why? Because they were entitled to her body. Perhaps the same narcissistic entitlement is the basis of a group of boys raping a young girl for hours...and dissociation from reality is the basis of onlookers who did not do a thing to stop the boys. In fact, they cheered them on.


Hugs,
CZ

[happygirl]

CZ,
I don't know what has happened to our youth but the cell phone and computer have also changed their sense of reality.  As you know I teach middle school and the stories I could tell you about parents and teenagers.  Parents have no idea what their children are really doing.  When they do find out, they refuse to put the responsibility onto their kids and work to make a change with them.  Kids will be kids is the attitude and approach towards the situation.  Right and wrong becomes blurred and the end result is a distorted view of what is right and wrong.  Give me a break!!  We are raising children to act like consequences do not matter and it is the parents who lead the way.  Everything is a learning experience until something huge happens. Then everyone is left dumbfounded wondering how the Hell it happened in the first place.  If only we had stopped excusing it and rationalizing it over and over again from the beginning. Maybe it wouldn't have spiraled out of contol. 

Ok..... I am going to take a deep breath and relax now.

Hugs
Happy girl

 

[CZBZ]

This may or may not be relevant but I'll bring it up anyway. 

I have wondered about the impact of divorce on our kids...with high rates of divorce even after a decade of marriage, surely it has an impact on parenting. My children were adults so that's different from my sister who's son was a minor when she divorced. I have noticed her not-so-healthy guilt about divorce and her not-so-healthy tendency to buy the kid whatever he wanted as a means to please him (and make herself feel better maybe). Placating children-of-divorce seems to be fairly typical for a lot of people. Plus, divorced parents are even more stressed to meet their children's needs AND their own needs (financial, emotional, etc.) It's easier to force teachers to bend the rules for a child than it is to get the child to follow the rules. ya know? The lesser of two evils, maybe. Enforcing consequences for a child's misbehavior is more WORK and PAIN and SUFFERING for the parent than just ignoring the situation and hoping it will go away.

Kids are watching though. Their sense of entitlement needs to be challenged and it's not up to the schools to do that anymore.

When i grew up, we had a couple of parents who were always raising hell at the school if their precious widdle childwen were treated less than royally. Today, I have a word to describe that: Narcissism. My folks were so univolved in my education that it was up to me to handle my mistakes and correct my own behavior to fit into society. Truth is, i'd rather handle it myself than involve my parents because they'd have stood up for the teacher and not for me.  If parents are always rescuing children, the child never learns to rescue him or herself.

If children's sense of entitlement is never challenged, they start to believe in their own superiority. That whatever they want SHOULD be granted them and the more disconnected those 'special' kids are from others, the less empathy they exhibit and the more likely they are to be aggressive towards others who do not Give Them What They Want. IN the case of the above story, entitlement, lack of empathy, and being 'special' are obvious.

Consequences do matter but first and foremost, parents have to stop protecting their own egos and LET the child suffer their own consequences. It's as if parents are more concerned about their image as 'good parents'...In the case of the parents i knew as a child, who always threw a temper tantrum when their children were reprimanded, they were definitely smitten by the N-bug themselves. One father was a state senator (he had HIS reputation to protect!) and the other woman was devoted to her image as a Perfect mother with Superior Children. But back then, schools had the authority to stand up for principles rather than backing down when pillars of the community threatened them with a lawsuit.

Hugs,
CZ

[CZBZ]

From NPR (includes a 7-minute audio report):

Rape At School Brings New Despair To Richmond

by RICHARD GONZALES
December 1, 2009

The city of Richmond, Calif., continues to wrestle with the effects of a brutal attack on a teenage girl who was gang-raped at her high school. Some of the suspects in the case may enter their pleas in court Tuesday. At least 20 people saw the October incident but did not intervene.

Richmond, a working-class town just across the bay from San Francisco, is the hometown of NPR's Richard Gonzales. He returned to see how the attack is affecting his city.

The Richmond I knew growing up was a rough place, where everyday violence was a fact of life. But that was some 40 years ago — and back then, we had good schools, and everybody's father had a job.

But things are different now. Just take a look at Richmond High School. It's a lot harder for today's students, says guidance counselor Edel Alejandre.

"It's a miracle the kids come [out] looking as good as they do. Lot of them come from families where the parents haven't worked for a long time," he said. "They are hardworking, good kids."

But Alejandre also knows the young men accused in the rape; he says he knew some of them were headed for trouble.

"The dehumanizing actions of these young men, and I stress 'young men,' is frightening," he said. "Where has their humanity gone?"

A lot of people in Richmond are asking the same question — even the cops.

Police Sgt. Christa Cappiali took me for a cruise through many familiar neighborhoods. Some blocks look tired and neglected, while others stand out. "It's a city that's struggling to kind of pull itself up by its own bootstraps," Cappiali said.

Richmond was a World War II boomtown that declined in the 1970s as industrial jobs dried up, downtown merchants fled and drugs took over.

Today, an old friend, Richard Mitchell, is Richmond's planning director. But back in 1969, he left the city to attend Harvard.

"After college and after being away, coming back in the late '70s and early '80s, it seemed that something significant had changed," Mitchell said.

"No one was taking care of our schools anymore."

The city has been trying to reinvent itself, by developing its waterfront and rehabbing its downtown. And in recent months, you could feel a sense of optimism slowly returning to Richmond — until the rape happened.

After that, Richmond High was blasted with anonymous e-mails saying the school — and the whole city — should be quarantined. The message struck a nerve, says sophomore Lizette Franco.

"We don't want it to be our identity, because there is so much more to Richmond than what they're portraying in the media. We're not animals. We're not savages," Franco said. "We're students striving to be better people."

After the rape, counseling sessions were held at Richmond High, and hundreds of students rallied to condemn the attack on their schoolmate.

Rhonda James, who runs the local rape crisis center, says the kids aren't getting all of the help they need.

"We have to realize that we have failed our boys and our girls," she said, "and I think you see that really strongly in an under-resourced community."

But James is quick to add that she's not excusing the rape.

"I think it's easy to start seeing yourself 'other' than the person you're abusing. It's easy to 'otherize,' if you have been otherized," James said. "We see it where men gather."

Authorities say the 16-year-old victim is back home. Although she suffers from vivid flashbacks and nightmares, she is determined to put the experience behind her. But her recovery could be a very long one.

The same could be said for my hometown.

*     *     *

[CZBZ]

I got a little off-topic with my last post but the original news story continues to haunt me. It reminds me of my 'women's studies' education about male appropriation of the female body and how women are commodified as property. Women are 'other-ized' and for those of us who have been objectified by narcissists, we may have a deeper emotional correlate to what it means to be 'other-ized'.

As we begin to understand the narcissistic pathology, most of us are shocked to find out that we were never 'real', never truly 'human' to the narcissist who fed his or her ego needs by appropriating us---laying claim to us as 'narcissistic supply'. That's a big dose of reality that's hard to face, let alone accept. Narcissistic objectification 'dehumanizes' us which might be more traumatic than physical or emotional abuse because it robs us of individuality, uniqueness and denies our souls.

News stories about gang rapes are always disturbing...but a news story depicting the apathetic attitudes of bystanders is additionally horrifying. Or, maybe 'apathetic' isn't the right word...maybe bystanders were actively engaged, encouraging the rapists.

I read a post on a blog called Everyone Needs Therapy (for sure reading news stories like this require a couple of therapy sessions just to cope with the news  ). I liked what the TherapyDoc had to say about "The Richmond Gang Rape" and wanted to pass her article on to forum members. At least she doesn't pretend Rape is about Sex. Rape is about Aggression and Anger and Domination and Entitlement and mostly (at least to me) Objectification of 'the other'.

Hugs,
CZ


"...What's objectification? Objectification is taking the human out of the body, seeing the body as a source of pleasure, like food. It is an object to be beat on, like the dog, on a bad day, or to be punished, like a kid who has acted out. When parents beat their children they are objectifying them, denying their humanity. You hurt? I don't care.

Rape is all about this. I don't care. You are here for me, nothing's going to stop me....So sure, poverty contributes something to this mix. But I wouldn't overdo it. It's less about not having money, more about having human decency, not being an animal." ~The Richmond Gang Rape, posted on the blog: Everyone Needs Therapy