Author Topic: The New Kitty Genovese  (Read 30144 times)

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 53343
    • View Profile
The New Kitty Genovese
« on: October 28, 2009, 10:21:17 PM »
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/10/28/california.gang.rape.bystander/index.html

Gang rape raises questions about bystanders' roleBy Stephanie Chen, CNNOctober 28, 2009 5:19 p.m. EDT
 "Genovese syndrome" was coined after dozens watched or heard a killer attack Kitty Genovese and did nothing.STORY HIGHLIGHTS
Psychologists say bystanders in large groups are less likely to take action

Police: As many as 20 people watched gang rape spanning over two hours

Bystanders didn't report assault to police and some participated in the attack

Some experts argue the witnesses may have feared retaliation from the gang(CNN) -- For more than two hours on a dark Saturday night, as many as 20 people watched or took part as a 15-year-old California girl was allegedly gang raped and beaten outside a high school homecoming dance, authorities said.

As hundreds of students gathered in the school gym, outside in a dimly lit alley where the victim was allegedly raped, police say witnesses took photos. Others laughed.

"As people announced over time that this was going on, more people came to see, and some actually participated," Lt. Mark Gagan of the Richmond Police Department told CNN.

The witnesses failed to report the crime to law enforcement, Gagan said. The victim remained hospitalized in stable condition. Police arrested five suspects and more arrests were expected.

So why didn't anyone come forward?

Criminology and psychology experts say there could be a variety of reasons why the crime wasn't reported. Several pointed to a problematic social phenomenon known as the bystander effect. It's a theory that has played out in lynchings, college riots and white-collar crimes.

Under the bystander effect, experts say that the larger the number of people involved in a situation, the less will get done.



Video: Girl gang-raped for hours

Video: Gang rape outside school dance

Video: Can witnesses be prosecuted? RELATED TOPICS
Sexual Offenses
California
"If you are in a crowd and you look and see that everyone is doing nothing, then doing nothing becomes the norm." explains Drew Carberry, a director at the National Council on Crime Prevention.

Carberry said witnesses can be less likely to report a crime because they reinforce each other with the notion that reporting the crime isn't necessary. Or, he says, witnesses may think another person in the crowd already reported the incident. The responsibility among the group becomes diffused.

"Kids learn at a young age when they observe bullying that they would rather not get involved because there is a power structure," Carberry adds.

The phrase bystander effect was coined in the 1960s after people watched or heard a serial killer stalk and stab a woman in two separate attacks in the Queens neighborhood of New York.

Kitty Genovese struggled with the attacker on the street and in her building. She shrieked for help and was raped, robbed and murdered. When witnesses in the building were questioned by police about why they remained silent and failed to act, one man, according to the 1964 New York Times article that broke the story, answered, "I didn't want to be involved."

Though the number of people who saw or heard Genovese struggle was eventually disputed, her case still became symbolic of a kind of crowd apathy that psychologists and social scientists call the "Genovese syndrome."

"I don't propose people get involved by running over and trying to stop it," the 73-year-old brother of Kitty Genovese told CNN, referring to the California gang rape case. Instead, Vincent Genovese advocates a call to 911. "Everyone has a cell phone," he said. "There is no excuse for people not to react to a situation like that."

A similar incident took place at a New Bedford, Massachusetts, bar in 1983. Witnesses said several men threw a woman on a pool table where they raped and performed oral sex on her. Several witnesses failed to call police.

"The people in the bar didn't do anything. They just let it happen," said Richard Felson, a professor of crime, law and justice at Penn State University in University Park, Pennsylvania.

This detached mentality can be especially pervasive among youth, who are too young to comprehend what victimization means, said Salvatore Didato, an organizational psychologist in New York. When a teenager -- or anyone -- doesn't have a personal bond to the victim, they are less likely to help out.

Experts say sometimes bystanders see the victim as less important than the person committing the crime, who appears to wield power. "The victim to them is a non-person," Didato said.

But in California, it's illegal for a witnessed crime involving children to go unreported. The Sherrice Iverson Child Victim Protection Act passed in 1999 makes it a misdemeanor to fail to report a crime against a child. However, the bill only applies to victims 14 or younger. The victim in the California gang-rape case was 15.

Phil Harris, a criminal justice professor at Temple University, who has studied juveniles and group situations for nearly three decades, offered another hypothesis on why as many as 20 witnesses failed to notify police. He said the witnesses could have been angry themselves -- or had a problem with the victim.

Richmond Police Department officials said some of the witnesses in the California gang rape ended up participating in the sexual assaults.

"A lot of kids don't know how to express anger and they are curious when anger is expressed," Harris said.

Scientific studies over the last decade have shown that adolescent brain development occurs into the 20s, which makes it hard for teens to make decisions, criminologists say. In 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court took this research into consideration when it ruled that children could not be given the death penalty.

It is still unclear the ages of the male witnesses who gathered around the victim in California and watched.

In Boston, Massachusetts, Northeastern University criminologist Jack McDevitt says he believes the California gang rape was too violent -- and lasted too long -- to be the result of the bystander effect alone.

McDevitt, who specializes in hate crime research, says the male witnesses may have kept quiet out of fear of retaliation. In his research, witnesses who live in violent communities often fear stepping forward because snitching isn't tolerated.

Snitching could also bring dangerous consequences to their friends and family. "They don't believe the system will protect them from the offender," he said. "They think the offender will find out their name."

That may have been the case in Chicago, Illinois, in September when an honor student was beaten to death by four teenage boys outside a school. Video captured by a bystander showed several students watching the attack, but police have found many of the witnesses tight-lipped in the South side community where violence has been prevalent. Police have charged three suspects with murder.

While information from the Richmond Police Department in the coming weeks may reveal more about the bystanders and attackers, crime experts say one thing is clear: Third parties can affect the outcome of a crime. Witnesses have the power to deter violence -- or stop a crime from going on, experts say.

Bystanders could have prevented the gang rape from lasting more than two hours, if they had reported the crime to authorities sooner.

The victim was found under a bench, semi-conscious.

"This just gets worse and worse the more you dig into it," Lt. Mark Gagan of the Richmond Police Department. "It was like a horror movie. I can't believe not one person felt compelled to help her."

Nick Valencia contributed to this report.

Guard Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 674
    • View Profile
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #1 on: October 29, 2009, 10:55:23 AM »
This made me remember the stories I've heard about domesticated dogs that overtake their owner in the event of an attack on their owner.  I'll expound:

There have been cases (I'll look for them later and cite them) where an owner's dogs actually join in on an attack of the owner to try and overthrow the alpha of their pack.  More or less showing that in other species will join in on a violent act because of pressure from the members of their pack.  Other primates do this as well . . .
Ryan “Guard Dog” Gruhn
Guro / DBMAA Business Director
Dog Brothers Martial Arts Association
"Smuggling Concepts Across the Frontiers of Style”
ryan@dogbrothers.com | www.dogbrothers.com

Jonobos

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 143
    • View Profile
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #2 on: October 29, 2009, 11:05:55 AM »
Quote
"This just gets worse and worse the more you dig into it," Lt. Mark Gagan of the Richmond Police Department. "It was like a horror movie. I can't believe not one person felt compelled to help her."

Says it all...
When life gives you lemons make lemonade
When life gives you hemlock, do NOT make hemlockade!

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 19025
    • View Profile
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #3 on: October 29, 2009, 06:37:08 PM »
This is only notable because it got media attention. Not only do bystanders do nothing, they sometimes deliberately obstruct police investigations and assist the escape of the offenders.

Rarick

  • Guest
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #4 on: October 30, 2009, 06:38:20 AM »
Mob Mentality.  Groups of people are the most dangerous nasty entities an individual will have to face.   A gun helps with that too, since multiple bullets mean a fair chunk of a threatening group is running a significant risk.  That is another factor of being able to carry a firearm.  I like you Unorganized concept of Militia, no group/mob concept just people preparing themselves for self-defense.


Jonobos

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 143
    • View Profile
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #5 on: October 30, 2009, 07:33:43 AM »
Mob Mentality.  Groups of people are the most dangerous nasty entities an individual will have to face.   A gun helps with that too, since multiple bullets mean a fair chunk of a threatening group is running a significant risk.  That is another factor of being able to carry a firearm.  I like you Unorganized concept of Militia, no group/mob concept just people preparing themselves for self-defense.



Assuming there was someone with the will to act, and armed appropriately... what sort of special attention do you think they would have received from the police?
When life gives you lemons make lemonade
When life gives you hemlock, do NOT make hemlockade!

Rarick

  • Guest
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #6 on: October 31, 2009, 03:04:04 AM »
Mob Mentality.  Groups of people are the most dangerous nasty entities an individual will have to face.   A gun helps with that too, since multiple bullets mean a fair chunk of a threatening group is running a significant risk.  That is another factor of being able to carry a firearm.  I like you Unorganized concept of Militia, no group/mob concept just people preparing themselves for self-defense.



Assuming there was someone with the will to act, and armed appropriately... what sort of special attention do you think they would have received from the police?

Oh I agree with that point, working as a 3rd party, the armed person would probably be up the creek.  911 on the cell phone tho'?  Teens, who were probably a majority of the crowd, do not always make good decisions, do they?  (it is a given chronic condition, given they biology of that age of person)
I was thinking what "kitty" could have done if she had a gun and the will.

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 19025
    • View Profile
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #7 on: October 31, 2009, 09:24:50 AM »
Mob Mentality.  Groups of people are the most dangerous nasty entities an individual will have to face.   A gun helps with that too, since multiple bullets mean a fair chunk of a threatening group is running a significant risk.  That is another factor of being able to carry a firearm.  I like you Unorganized concept of Militia, no group/mob concept just people preparing themselves for self-defense.



Assuming there was someone with the will to act, and armed appropriately... what sort of special attention do you think they would have received from the police?

Sexual assault counts as "serious bodily injury"and given the threat of HIV, death. In most states, you can use force, including deadly force to protect a 3rd party from serious bodily injury/death.

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 19025
    • View Profile
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #8 on: November 01, 2009, 07:22:15 AM »
http://www.sphere.com/2009/10/30/cries-for-help-not-always-answered/?icid=main|main|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sphere.com%2F2009%2F10%2F30%2Fcries-for-help-not-always-answered%2F

"Many teens today have had years of exposure to violent video games and media images, Parks said, which studies show desensitizes them to violence. Richmond police said they believe some of the witnesses took cell phone pictures of the girl's ordeal – further proof of possible desensitization, Parks said.

"We've created this environment where adolescents can treat this awful stuff as spectacle," she said."


Jonobos

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 143
    • View Profile
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #9 on: November 03, 2009, 11:04:40 AM »
http://www.sphere.com/2009/10/30/cries-for-help-not-always-answered/?icid=main|main|dl1|link3|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.sphere.com%2F2009%2F10%2F30%2Fcries-for-help-not-always-answered%2F

"Many teens today have had years of exposure to violent video games and media images, Parks said, which studies show desensitizes them to violence. Richmond police said they believe some of the witnesses took cell phone pictures of the girl's ordeal – further proof of possible desensitization, Parks said.

"We've created this environment where adolescents can treat this awful stuff as spectacle," she said."



This sort of thing makes me very nervous. I am not sure that the people doing these studies necessarily see the difference between the violence in video games/media, and in the martial arts. In the mind of the nanny state, martial arts could easily be categorized with guns as the cause of violent crime.
When life gives you lemons make lemonade
When life gives you hemlock, do NOT make hemlockade!

sting

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 290
    • View Profile
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #10 on: November 05, 2009, 02:21:02 PM »

"Many teens today have had years of exposure to violent video games and media images, Parks said, which studies show desensitizes them to violence. Richmond police said they believe some of the witnesses took cell phone pictures of the girl's ordeal – further proof of possible desensitization, Parks said.


These same arguments are raised in the anti-spanking debate.  Let's ask a few questions.  Why do children imitate some behaviors they see in the media and in their environment while rejecting others?  Did Popeye influence several generations around the world to eat much more spinach?  Why would childhood spanking escalate to adult criminal violence while persistent pleas to eat carrots and peas do not lead to healthy adult diets? Do animated children's programs with characters such as "Super Readers" actually encourage children to read?

Does exposure to violent images also help improve the identification of violent situations? Why do we live in the most peaceful decade in American history when the frequency of violent images is at an all-time high?

I'd speculate that the people of today are just as cowardly as those of yesterday. The fact that people could provide graphical proof with the technology of today on demonstrates they are more involved than the bystanders of yesterday.

Baltic Dog

Go Shin Jutsu Kenpo (Prof. Richard Lewis)
3rd Degree Black Belt Instructor

Bono JKD/Kajukenbo (Prof. John Bono)
Gentlemen's Fighting Club

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 19025
    • View Profile
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #11 on: November 05, 2009, 04:55:12 PM »

"Many teens today have had years of exposure to violent video games and media images, Parks said, which studies show desensitizes them to violence. Richmond police said they believe some of the witnesses took cell phone pictures of the girl's ordeal – further proof of possible desensitization, Parks said.


These same arguments are raised in the anti-spanking debate.  Let's ask a few questions.  Why do children imitate some behaviors they see in the media and in their environment while rejecting others?  Did Popeye influence several generations around the world to eat much more spinach? 


http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/249739.stm

Spinach success

With cartoons still showing on satellite television Popeye's popularity shows no sign of waning.

It must be good news for spinach growers who credited the sailor with a 33% increase in spinach consumption in the United States thanks to his trademark song: "I'm strong to the finish 'cause I eats me spinach I'm Popeye the Sailor Man."


 
Crystal City, Texas has its own tribute to Popeye
Popeye also is credited with having rescued the spinach industry in the 1930s. Popeye's influence on America's eating habits was so strong that in 1937 US spinach growers in Crystal City,Texas, put up a statue in his honour.

Popeye-branded spinach remains a strong seller in America and he has his own brand of fresh spinach and salads.





G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 19025
    • View Profile
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #12 on: November 05, 2009, 05:00:18 PM »
http://www.killology.com/print/print_teachkid.htm

"Teaching Kids To Kill"

By Lt. Col. Dave Grossman
Phi Kappa Phi National Forum, Fall 2000, 2500 words

Authors note: This was published in Phi Kappa Phi “National Forum,” in their Fall 2000 issue. "National Forum is one of the most prestigious, interdisciplinary, academic journals. An earlier version was published in “Christianity Today,” “Saturday Evening Post,” “US Catholic,” “Hinduism Today,” and many other US publications, and it was translated and published in periodicals in nine different languages. I am the copyright holder, and I authorize reproduction and distribution of this article by the readers of this web page.

A Case Study: Paducah, Kentucky
Michael Carneal, the 14-year-old killer in the Paducah, Kentucky school shootings, had never fired a real pistol in his life. He stole a .22 pistol, fired a few practice shots, and took it to school. He fired eight shots at a high school prayer group, hitting eight kids, five of them head shots and the other three upper torso (Grossman & DeGaetana, 1999).

I train numerous elite military and law enforcement organizations around the world. When I tell them of this achievement they are stunned. Nowhere in the annals of military or law enforcement history can we find an equivalent "achievement."

Where does a 14-year-old boy who never fired a gun before get the skill and the will to kill? Video games and media violence.

A Virus of Violence

First we must understand the magnitude of the problem. The murder rate does not accurately represent our situation. Murder has been held down by the development of ever more sophisticated life saving skills and techniques. A better indicator of the problem is the aggravated assault rate -- the rate at which human beings are attempting to kill one another. And that has gone up from around 60 per 100,000 in 1957, to over 440 per 100,000 by the mid-1990’s (Statistical Abstracts of the United States, 1957-1997).

Even with small downturns recently, the violent crime rate is still at a phenomenally high level, and this is true not just in America but worldwide. In Canada, per capita assaults increased almost fivefold between 1964 and 1993. According to Interpol, between 1977 and 1993 the per capita assault rate increased nearly fivefold in Norway and Greece, and in Australia and New Zealand it increased approximately fourfold. During the same period it tripled in Sweden, and approximately doubled in: Belgium, Denmark, England-Wales, France, Hungary, Netherlands, and Scotland. In India during this period the per capita murder rate doubled. In Mexico and Brazil violent crime is also skyrocketing, and in Japan juvenile violent crime went up 30 percent in 1997 alone.

This virus of violence is occurring worldwide, and the explanation for it has to be some new factor that is occurring in all of these countries (Grossman, 1999b). Like heart disease, there are many factors involved in the causation of violent crime, and we must never downplay any of them. But there is only one new variable that is present in each of these nations, bearing the same fruit in every case, and that is media violence being presented as “entertainment” for children.

Killing Unnaturally

I spent almost a quarter of a century as an Army infantry officer, a paratrooper, a Ranger, and a West Point Psychology Professor, learning and studying how we enable people to kill. Most soldiers have to be trained to kill.

Healthy members of most species have a powerful, natural resistance to killing their own kind. Animals with antlers and horns fight one another by butting heads. Against other species they go to the side to gut and gore. Piranha turn their fangs on everything, but they fight one another with flicks of the tail. Rattlesnakes bite anything, but they wrestle one another.

When we human beings are overwhelmed with anger and fear our thought processes become very primitive, and we slam head on into that hardwired resistance against killing. During World War II, we discovered that only 15-20 percent of the individual riflemen would fire at an exposed enemy soldier (Marshall, 1998). You can observe this in killing throughout history, as I have outlined in much greater detail in my book, On Killing, (Grossman, 1996), in my three peer-reviewed encyclopedia entries, (Grossman, 1999a, 1999b, and Murray, 1999) and in my entry in the Oxford Companion to American Military History (1999).

That's the reality of the battlefield. Only a small percentage of soldiers are willing and able to kill. When the military became aware of this, they systematically went about the process of “fixing” this “problem.” And fix it they did. By Vietnam the firing rate rose to over 90 percent (Grossman, 1999a).

The Methods in this Madness: Brutalization

The training methods the military uses are brutalization, classical conditioning, operant conditioning, and role modeling. Let us explain these and then observe how the media does the same thing to our children, but without the safeguards.

Brutalization, or “values inculcation,” is what happens at boot camp. Your head is shaved, you are herded together naked, and dressed alike, losing all vestiges of individuality. You are trained relentlessly in a total immersion environment. In the end you embrace violence and discipline and accept it as a normal and essential survival skill in your brutal new world.

Something very similar is happening to our children through violence in the media. It begins at the age of 18 months, when a child can begin to understand and mimic what is on television. But up until they're six or seven years old they are developmentally, psychologically, physically unable to discern the difference between fantasy and reality. Thus, when a young child sees somebody on TV being shot, stabbed, raped, brutalized, degraded, or murdered, to them it is real, and some of them embrace violence and accept it as a normal and essential survival skill in a brutal new world. (Grossman & DeGaetano, 1999).

On June 10th, 1992, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a definitive study on the impact of TV violence. In nations, regions, or cities where television appears there is an immediate explosion of violence on the playground, and within 15 years there is a doubling of the murder rate. Why 15 years? That's how long it takes for a brutalized toddler to reach the “prime crime” years. That's how long it takes before you begin to reap what you sow when you traumatize and desensitize children. (Centerwall, 1992).

The JAMA concluded that, “the introduction of television in the 1950’s caused a subsequent doubling of the homicide rate, i.e., long-term childhood exposure to television is a causal factor behind approximately one half of the homicides committed in the United States, or approximately 10,000 homicides annually.” The study went on to state that “...if, hypothetically, television technology had never been developed, there would today be 10,000 fewer homicides each year in the United states, 70,000 fewer rapes, and 700,000 fewer injurious assaults” (Centerwall, 1992).

Today the data linking violence in the media to violence in society is superior to that linking cancer and tobacco. The American Psychological Association (APA), the American Medical Association (AMA), the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the Surgeon General, and the Attorney General have all made definitive statements about this. When I presented a paper to the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) annual convention in May, 2000 (Grossman, 2000), the statement was made that: “The data is irrefutable. We have reached the point where we need to treat those who try to deny it, like we would treat Holocaust deniers.”

Classical Conditioning

Classical conditioning is like Pavlov's dog in Psych 101. Remember the ringing bell, the food, and the dog could not hear the bell without salivating?

In World War II, the Japanese would make some of their young, unblooded soldiers bayonet innocent prisoners to death. Their friends would cheer them on. Afterwards, all these soldiers were treated to the best meal they've had in months, sake, and to so-called "comfort girls." The result? They learned to associate violence with pleasure.

This technique is so morally reprehensible that there are very few examples of it in modern U.S. military training, but the media is doing it to our children. Kids watch vivid images of human death and suffering and they learn to associate it with: laughter, cheers, popcorn, soda, and their girlfriend's perfume (Grossman & DeGaetano, 1999).

After the Jonesboro shootings, one of the high school teachers told me about her students' reaction when she told them that someone had shot a bunch of their little brothers, sisters, and cousins in the middle school. "They laughed," she told me with dismay, "they laughed." We have raised a generation of barbarians who have learned to associate human death and suffering with pleasure (Grossman & DeGaetano, 1999).

Operant Conditioning

The third method the military uses is operant conditioning, a powerful procedure of stimulus-response training. We see this with pilots in flight simulators, or children in fire drills. When the fire alarm is set off, the children learn to file out in orderly fashion. One day there's a real fire and they're frightened out of their little wits, but they do exactly what they've been conditioned to do (Grossman & DeGaetano, 1999).

In World War II we taught our soldiers to fire at bullseye targets, but that training failed miserably because we have no known instances of any soldiers being attacked by bullseyes. Now soldiers learn to fire at realistic, man-shaped silhouettes that pop up in their field of view. That's the stimulus. The conditioned response is to shoot the target and then it drops. Stimulus-response, stimulus-response, repeated hundreds of times. Later, when they are in combat and somebody pops up with a gun, reflexively they will shoot and shoot to kill, 75 to 80 percent of the shooting on the modern battlefield is the result of this kind of training (Grossman & Siddle, 1999).

In his national Presidential radio address on April 24, 1999, shortly after the Littleton high school massacre, President Clinton stated that: “A former Lieutenant Colonel and Professor, David Grossman, has said that these games teach young people to kill with all the precision of a military training program, but none of the character training that goes along with it.”

The result is ever more homemade pseudo-sociopaths who kill reflexively and show no remorse. Our kids are learning to kill and learning to like it. The most remarkable example is in Paducah, Kentucky the school killer fired eight shots, getting eight hits, on eight different milling, scrambling, screaming kids. Five of them were head shots (Grossman & DeGaetano, 1999).

Where did he get this phenomenal skill? Well, there is a $130-million law suit against the video game manufacturers in that case, working itself through the appeals system, claiming that the violent video games, the murder simulators, gave that mass murderer the skill and the will to kill.

In July, 2000, at a bipartisan, bicameral Capital Hill conference in Washington, DC, the AMA, the APA, the AAP and the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) issued a joint statement saying that "viewing entertainment violence can lead to increases in aggressive attitudes, values and behavior, particularly in children. Its effects are measurable and long-lasting. Moreover, prolonged viewing of media violence can lead to emotional desensitization toward violence in real life ...Although less research has been done on the impact of violent interactive entertainment [such as video games] on young people, preliminary studies indicate that the negative impact may be significantly more severe than that wrought by television, movies or music."

Role Models

In the military your role model is your drill sergeant. He personifies violence, aggression, and discipline. (The discipline, and doing it to adults, are the safeguard)(Grossman, 1996). The drill sergeant, and heroes such as John Wayne, Audey Murphy, Sergeant York and Chesty Puller, have always been used as role models to influence young, impressionable teenagers.

Today the media are providing our children with role models, not just in the lawless sociopaths in movies and in TV shows, but in the transformation of these schoolyard killers into media celebrities.

In the 1970's we learned about "cluster suicides," in which TV reporting of teen suicides was directly responsible for numerous copycat suicides of other teenagers. Because of this, television stations today generally do not cover teen suicides. But when the pictures of teenage killers appear on TV, the effect is tragically similar. If there are children willing to kill themselves to get on TV, are there children willing to kill your child to get on TV?

Thus we get the effect of copycat, cluster murders that work their way across America like a virus spread by the six o'clock local news. No matter what someone has done, if you put their picture on TV, you have made them a celebrity and someone, somewhere, may emulate them. This effect is magnified when the role model is a teenager, and the effect on other teens can be profound.

In Japan, Canada, and other democracies around the world it is a punishable, criminal act to place the names and images of juvenile criminals in the media, because they know that it will result in other tragic deaths. The media has every right and responsibility to tell the story, but do they have a “right” to turn the killers into celebrities?

Unlearning Violence

On the night of the Jonesboro shootings, clergy and counselors were working in small groups in the hospital waiting room, comforting the groups of relatives and friends of the 15 shooting victims. Then they noticed one woman who had been sitting alone.

A counselor went up to the woman and discovered that she was the mother of one of the girls who had been killed. She had no friends, no husband, no family with her as she sat in the hospital, alone. "I just came to find out how to get my little girl's body back," she said. But the body had been taken to the state capital, for an autopsy. Told this, she said, "I just don't know how we're going to pay for the funeral. I don't know how we can afford it."

That little girl was all she had in all the world, and all she wanted to do was wrap her little girl’s body in a blanket and take her home. Some people’s solution to the problem of media violence is, “If you don’t like it, just turn it off.” If that is your only solution to this problem, then come to Jonesboro, and tell her how this would have kept her little girl safe.

All of us can keep our kids safe from this toxic, addictive substance, and it won’t be enough if the neighbors are not doing the same. Perhaps the time has come to consider regulating what the violence industry is selling to kids, controlling the sale of visual violent imagery to children, while still permitting free access to adults, just as we do with guns, pornography, alcohol, tobacco, sex and cars.

Fighting Back: Education, Legislation, Litigation

We must work against child abuse, racism, poverty and children’s access to guns, and in rebuilding our families, but we must also take on the producers of media violence. The solution strategy that I submit for consideration is, “education, legislation, litigation.”

Simply put, we need to work toward “legislation” which outlaws violent video games for children. In July, 2000, the city of Indianapolis passed just such an ordinance, and every other city, country or state in America has the right to do the same. There is no Constitutional “right” to teach children to blow people’s heads off at the local video arcade. And we are very close to being able to do to the media, through “litigation,” what is being done to the tobacco industry, hotting them in the only place they understand--their wallets.

Most of all, the American people need to be informed. Every parent must be warned of the impact of violent visual media on children, as we would warn them of some rampant carcinogen. Violence is not a game, it is not fun, it is not something that we let children do for entertainment. Violence kills.

CBS President Leslie Moonves was asked if he thought the school massacre in Littleton, Colorado, had anything to do with the media. His answer was: "Anyone who thinks the media has nothing to do with it, is an idiot." (Reuters. 2000, March 19). That is what the networks are selling, and we do not have to buy it. An educated and informed society can and must find its way home from the dark and lonely place to which it has traveled.

* * * * * * * * * * *

Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, is a retired Army Ranger, West Point psychology professor, and an expert on the psychology of killing. He has testified before the U.S. House and Senate, and his research was cited by the President of the United States in the wake of the Littleton school shootings. He is director of the Warrior Science Group in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and has written Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill: A Call to Action Against TV, Movie, and Video Game Violence, (Crown/Random, 1999) and On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society (Little, Brown and Co., 1996).

References

Centerwall, B. (1992). Television and violence: The scale of the problem and where to go from here. Journal of the American Medical Association, 267: 3059-3061.
Grossman, D. (1996). On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society. New York: Little, Brown, and Company.
Grossman, D. (1999). Aggression and Violence. In J. Chambers (Ed.) Oxford Companion to American Military History. New York: Oxford University Press (p. 10).
Grossman, D. (1999a). Weaponry, Evolution of. In L. Curtis & J. Turpin (Eds.) Academic Press Encyclopedia Academic Press (p. 797).
Grossman, D. & Siddle, B. (1999b). Psychological Effects of Combat. In L. Curtis & J. Turpin (Eds.). Academic Press Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict. San Diego, CA: Academic Press. (pp. 144-145).
Grossman, D. (2000, May). "Teaching Kids to Kill, A Case Study: Paducah, Kentucky." Paper presented at the American Psychiatric Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL.
Interpol International Crime Statistics, Interpol, Lyons, France, vols. 1977 to 1994.
Marshall, S.L.A. (1978). Men Against Fire. Gloucester, Mass.: Peter Smith.
Murray, K. (1999). Behavioral Psychology. In L. Curtis & J. Turpin (Eds.) Academic Press Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace and Conflict. San Diego, CA: Academic Press.
Reuters Wire Service (2000, March 29). CBS airing mob drama deemed too violent a year ago. The Washington Post.
Statistical Abstracts of the United States, 1957-1997

Jonobos

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 143
    • View Profile
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #13 on: November 05, 2009, 07:28:58 PM »
Quote
After the Jonesboro shootings, one of the high school teachers told me about her students' reaction when she told them that someone had shot a bunch of their little brothers, sisters, and cousins in the middle school. "They laughed," she told me with dismay, "they laughed." We have raised a generation of barbarians who have learned to associate human death and suffering with pleasure (Grossman & DeGaetano, 1999).

I have been told that this is not uncommon, or unhealthy in any way. Children are not emotionally developed enough to grasp the depth of what happened in traumatic situations like this. Laughter, or indifference, or even making silly noises with their mouths are all to be expected. In time they will grasp what happened and show more appropriate responses. It has nothing to do with associating death with pleasure. They just don't know how to react, and more often have not even processed what has happened.

I would go into a rant about bad parenting, and how these companies only sell this stuff because it is popular... but I don't have kids so I will refrain.
When life gives you lemons make lemonade
When life gives you hemlock, do NOT make hemlockade!

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 19025
    • View Profile
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #14 on: November 05, 2009, 07:48:43 PM »
Children? I'm not sure that's the best description of high school students.

Jonobos

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 143
    • View Profile
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #15 on: November 05, 2009, 09:47:17 PM »
Children? I'm not sure that's the best description of high school students.

We don't live in a tribal society where we struggle for our lives every day. In our society, teenagers are not prepared to deal with death and dismemberment. They are still very much children. Maybe this is good, and maybe it is bad, but it is the plain and simple truth. Many of them have never experienced death before. They simply have no frame of reference, and even if they do they certainly have never experienced anything on this level.

Is violence in the media a problem? Yes, I agree with you. Is it as simple as that? Hardly. Should we be doing something about it? Absolutely. But I hardly think you can expect teenagers to jump in and help the poor girl getting gang rapped and beaten if adults are not willing to do it either. Was it a case of violence in the media when it was Kitty Genovese?


When life gives you lemons make lemonade
When life gives you hemlock, do NOT make hemlockade!

Rarick

  • Guest
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #16 on: November 10, 2009, 05:59:25 AM »
Mob Mentality.  Groups of people are the most dangerous nasty entities an individual will have to face.   A gun helps with that too, since multiple bullets mean a fair chunk of a threatening group is running a significant risk.  That is another factor of being able to carry a firearm.  I like you Unorganized concept of Militia, no group/mob concept just people preparing themselves for self-defense.



Assuming there was someone with the will to act, and armed appropriately... what sort of special attention do you think they would have received from the police?

Sexual assault counts as "serious bodily injury"and given the threat of HIV, death. In most states, you can use force, including deadly force to protect a 3rd party from serious bodily injury/death.


In California?!

G M

  • Power User
  • ***
  • Posts: 19025
    • View Profile
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #17 on: November 10, 2009, 09:55:03 AM »
http://www.shouselaw.com/self-defense.html

Forcible and atrocious crimes



If you argue that you acted in self-defense because you believed you were about to be killed, maimed, raped, robbed, or the victim of another California violent crime, the judge will instruct the jury that they may presume you had a reasonable belief that you were about to suffer imminent harm.16

If you acted in response to one of these "forcible and atrocious crimes", the jury will only need to consider whether you responded reasonably.

**It appears so. I am not an expert in California law. Please consult with an attorney/qualified expert just to be sure.**

Crafty_Dog

  • Administrator
  • Power User
  • *****
  • Posts: 53343
    • View Profile
Re: The New Kitty Genovese
« Reply #18 on: November 10, 2009, 08:44:48 PM »
GM:

I'm on a clumsy computer at the moment.  May I ask you to also post that info on the Self Defense Law thread as well?

Thank you