Something similar to this happened to one of my sisters during the early 1970's. I can't tell you how deep the horror goes but it lasts a lifetime.

I am terribly sorry (doesn't really say enough does it?) your sister went through such a horrific ordeal. I can well imagine events like this NEVER go away.

One of my responsibilities as a parent (as I saw it) was to prepare my children for how they should conduct themselves when dealing with the opposite sex. This was as true for my son as it is for my daughters. I began teaching my son how to treat women when he was 5 or 6 years old. He's twenty-five now and we still talk about appropriate behavior from time to time.

I've similarly taught my daughters a truth that most parents would rather not broach - in effect, young boys are predatory animals looking for an opportunity to mate. Even the best boys from the best families will behave deplorably if given the chance. Supervision is critical. All the time, every time kids are gathered in groups of two or more.

This situation is disturbing on so many levels it is impossible to express them all in this short space. I'm glad you posted it for OS consideration, however. We need to have this talk, often, honestly, and with real conviction.

Well put Jamie. As you say, even the 'good' boys will behave deplorably. It sounds like you have been fine parents with your kids, but also aware of the dangers out there. You're right - this issue needs much more thought and discussion.

Good grief. Where did this happen? HOW could it happen?

Rated

It happened it California, B1. How it could happen? I'm at a loss. That NO ONE would have called for help is beyond me. They have nearly killed this girl over what Jamie correctly calls 'predatory instincts'. Not one boy, found this wrong enough to stop it. Again, I'm at a loss. How can a parent trust sending their daughters to innocent homecoming dances when this could happen.

Link to article about this, please? I'd like to read more and follow the story in the news.

"Some may call it ‘mob mentality’"

Okay, I'm fine with that definition.

Now when each and every last one of those assholes (including the "watchers") gets long assed prison terms and get gang raped themselves, I hope that they are equally fine with my definition of "justice".

mad_typist - I still haven't figured out the html thing. I'm a Luddite. The URL however is now at the bottom of my post.

Nice call Safe_Bet. No one likes rapists in prison. Bet these boys end up as someone's honey. Let's hope so anyway.

I'm afraid this sort of thing will only get worse as long as the Hollywood pushers sell sex as a wonderful recreational obsession that everyone is doing and that never has bad consequences.

Nauseating.

According to the article, the girl was found because someone overheard people "reminiscing about the incident".

Inhuman.

I don't know, Kathy. I don't think rape has anything to do with sex. It's power and domination. I think the root of it may be more in the dehumanization of women in pornography etc. I'm a free speecher, so I'm not going to say there shouldn't be porn, just how it's dealt with by young people. Some porn is close to rape.

Leeds, that's right. If I'm correct it was even bragging, but you may have the more accurate story. Inhuman, and horrific.

Just tragic - wrong on every level. I mean, I know such things have been happening since history began, but damn . . . does it ever end?

Sick and sickening. Praying that the girl heals physically because mentally is going to be a real challenge.

Pardon me for going off.... The PARENTS of those boys, whether they were participating or egging it on, NEED to be stripped naked and horsewhipped on the courthouse steps. (I know a few Doms and Dommes who would VOLUNTEER for that particular "duty" if nobody can be found who can handle a whip. )

I KNOW my son, I know his attitude towards women and towards sex... and he's the kid that would bellow for chaperones, tell 'em to call the cops and an ambulance and then wade in and start kicking asses while he waits for the police to show up. I also KNOW that HE knows that NO legal punishment would be WORSE than what *I* would do to him if he assaulted a woman (or a child) without a whole LOT of provocation (Specifically... if it's NOT self defense... his ass is MINE and THIS bitch don't PLAY) .

Reading that felt like a punch to the gut. Thanks for the post, madcelt.

What can you say? It's just disgusting.
R

"I'm afraid this sort of thing will only get worse as long as the Hollywood pushers sell sex as a wonderful recreational obsession that everyone is doing and that never has bad consequences."

OMFG! PLEASE don't equate sex to rape! I can't even fathom that a woman could say that!

If you want to rail against Hollywood, rail against their incessant sexism and insistent objectification of women by men.

So where were the other girls at the dance? They could have phoned too.

Not that it makes what happened any better. Just sayin.

@Mr E
The 2 articles I read stated the attack happened outside where the dance was being held, and that there were no girls at the scene.
I think the gender of any onlookers is irrelevant to their culpability. Anyone aware this was going on that did not try to help is, as I said before, inhuman.

I agree that its inhuman and beyond the pale. I just was wondering why it was only boys being singled out-- the setup said it was a homecoming dance where there are usually people of both genders milling about-- and three hours is a long time. But if there were no girls there, I guess that explains that. Still heineous, didn't mean to imply otherwise.

This is horrifying. I had already decided no more high school dances for my daughter after she reported that she and her date went and sat in the hallway since they were having to dance around couples having sex on the dance floor. Apparently the coach had to make an announcement that such behavior was inappropriate.

I am NOT excusing the boys,
but realize: a fierce primal power was released..
it came from somewhere...frustration....inner turmoil...

Primal scenes are sometimes not even in the human sphere,
and one boy trying to stop it would have been
retaliated against. These boys must live the rest of their lives with the
knowledge that they are the Beast.

And their parents...good god..

pain everywhere in this one...

homecoming..

ugh
Jme

You are all right in your own way - rape however is not equated with sex. Girls present would make no difference - but I bet they were not. A gang of boys perpetrating a heinous, violent attack would keep most girls away. Mrs. Raptor, glad you have a son who would stick up for the weak. James, I'm not sure they care that they are the beast. To them if was probably a good time.

the solution is really very simple in a case like that.

hang them all, their siblings and their parents then give them a fair trail.

throw the parents of every student in the school in jail for 90 days for contributing to that mind set.

The school board, city hall, and police are highly liable.
If economies were made while knowing that this attitude exhisted then hang them.

Let the bodies rot in plain sight of everyone.

This is a crime worse than murder and deserves intense disapproval and punishment. absolute zero tolerance, no discussion.

Madcelt,
Are you familiar with a book by Christopher Browning called Ordinary Men? It's an extraordinary non-fiction account of a German police battalion during WWII. These were just your local precinct cops--not military--who were sent into Poland to "cleanse" Polish towns of Jews. Browning wanted to know how men could do this--kill indiscriminately, when they were just "ordinary" men. His conclusion was that it had to do with each man's sense of his own masculinity. It would make him look bad if he chose not to participate. He would be seen as weak. And before someone thinks that these men didn't have a choice, the commander of the force offered several times to let men out of the duty who didn't want to do it. Very few took him up on it.
I'm not saying that this is what happened here. It's horrific, and I hope the young men are prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But I wonder if there was a boy among them who thought to himself, "I have to do this thing because if I don't, the other guys will think I'm a pussy."
That poor woman. May she find peace and inner strength to deal with what's been done to her.

My son's comment to my nephew's girlfriend over dinner when we were discussing it was the following: "If I were to participate in something like that nobody would ever find my body... and it'd be more merciful for me to commit suicide than to LET mom get a hold of me" Boy knows his momma well.

Calif. town rattled by alleged rape of girl, 15
TERRY COLLINS | October 27, 2009 08:05 PM EST | AP
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

RICHMOND, Calif. — The gang rape and beating of a 15-year-old girl on school grounds after her homecoming dance was horrific enough. But even more shocking, police say, was that up to 20 people watched and did nothing to stop it.

The attack over the weekend rattled this crime-ridden city of 120,000 in the San Francisco Bay area, where one police official called it one of the most heinous crimes he has ever seen. Some students have already left the school district in response to the attack.

"It's not safe there at all," said 16-year-old Jennie Steinberg, whose mother let her transfer out of the district Tuesday. "I'm not going back."

The victim, a sophomore, had left the dance and was drinking in a school courtyard with a group of students when she was attacked, police said.

Two suspects were in custody Monday, but police said as many as five others ranging in age from 15 to mid-20s attacked the girl for more than two hours at a dimly lit area near benches Saturday night. More than a dozen people saw the rape without notifying police.

The girl was found naked from the waist down near a picnic table. She remains hospitalized with non-life threatening injuries.

"This was a barbaric act. I still cannot get my head around the fact that numerous people either watched, walked away or participated in her assault," Lt. Mark Gagan said Tuesday. "It's one of the most disturbing crimes in my 15 years as a police officer."

Gagan would not comment on rumors that observers took video of the attack on cell phones and may have posted it online.

Manuel Ortega, a 19-year-old former student, was arrested after trying to flee the scene. He is being held on $800,000 bail for investigation of rape and robbery. A 15-year-old student also was booked late Monday on one count of sexual assault, Gagan said.

Even though he said as many as 20 people were witnesses, Gagan said officials are still trying to determine the exact number of people involved. "I'm confident that the list will expand and at the end of our investigation we will get a clear indication of who was there and who did what," Gagan said.

The attack occurred in a city that has dealt with its share of vicious crimes in recent years, and the school recently approved surveillance cameras after a series of violent crimes. In one case a few years back, a student was shot outside the school, ran inside and died in the then-principal's hands, said Marin Trujillo, a spokesman for the West Contra Costa Unified School District.

Richmond is an industrialized conclave near the San Francisco Bay that is known as one nation's most dangerous cities. In 2007, Richmond had 47 homicides, and the murder rate led the state for cities with populations of 100,000 or more, surpassing Los Angeles and Oakland.

That number dropped to 27 in 2008, but has spiked to 44 killings so far this year, amid drug dealing and gang activity that has engulfed the town, Gagan said.

Gagan said the girl left the dance and was walking to meet her father for a ride home when a classmate invited her to join a group drinking in the courtyard. The girl had consumed a large amount of alcohol by the time the assault began, police said. Gagan said the girl's father tried to call her cell phone, but no one answered.

Gagan said police received a tip about a possible assault on campus from a young woman who heard two males bragging about it. Officers found the girl semiconscious near a picnic table.

Trujillo said there were four police officers and 15 school site supervisors monitoring the dance. He said there were no problems during the dance inside the school gym, calling it "a success."

But Trujillo called the rape outside on school grounds "a tragic incident."

"We wished this had never happened. This was such a heinous crime," Trujillo said. "We are all going to learn from this."

Student Joseph Machado, 16, said the mood inside Richmond High School was tense as officers were questioning fellow students. Two squad cars were parked outside the main entrance, and school security teams were patrolling the grounds in golf carts.

"Some of my friends were saying, 'What if that happened to me?'" said Machado, whose parents didn't allow him to go to the dance. "This school, this city already has a bad reputation and now this makes it worse."

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20091027/us-homecoming-gang-rape/

I appreciate that you took the time to right this. I have been taken to task when I have stated that under the right circumstances, boys and men can become rapists. When I wrote about the 1/4 of men in S. Africa who were admitted rapists, many responded with an attitude that it was something that would easily happen - over there, in South Africa or the Middle East or any other place by any other group of people. Of course, our own sons, brothers, fathers or favorite film directors are never rapists.

I've read on some other blogs that this particular gang rape is being blamed on non-whites (I have no idea of the races of those involved) and that this is a problem with California's society. When can we finally admit that if 1 in 6 women are victims of completed rape in this country and 1 in 3 are victims of sexual assault, there are no "other people, over there" we can blame it on? This is our society, our culture. We even had 30 Republicans support KBR over the rights of rape victims. I have henceforth referred to those 30 as "pro-rape Republicans". It's the truth.

This is pretty fucking unbelievable.

Thank you for writing this.

Jamie, thank you for being honest with your kids.

I'm not familiar with the book fingerslake, but was aware how 'locals' in German occupied territory often volunteered to kill Jews. Your take on the 'masculinity' angle is very interesting indeed, especially in light of this case. I will look up your book suggestion. Thank you.

Thanks Susan - a much more detailed account than what I had heard. I appreciate you posting a fuller story.

Well, said Renaissance lady - rape has no race and unfortunately as a Canadian I am not familiar with the KBR. Fill me in?

madcelt...

KBR is a division of Haliburton Oilfield Services. KBR is the company that "won" the NO BID government contract to help rebuild the oil fields in Iraq. KBR employees in Iraq have a history of raping Iraqui women and girls and then KBR spirits them out of the country (the employees not the women and girls raped) and covers up the rapes.

Longer version would take up pages and pages. Haliburton is one of those companies that I flat REFUSE to work for in ANY capacity again. Been there, done that and THOSE "roughnecks" are the lowest of the low and the biggest reason that IF a stranger touches me without my permission they are likely to draw back a bloody stump.

The best summary I can find anywhere regarding KBR was this from the daily show:
http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/20091015_daily_show_rape-nuts_on_capitol_hill1/

It a nutshell, women who were contractors with KBR in Iraq were raped but due to a clause in their contract requiring that they use company arbitration, were unable to sue or press charges against their rapists. This made headlines when one woman was gang raped and later locked in a storage container to be kept from reporting it. She used her cell phone to call her parents who in turn called Rep. Ted Poe from Houston (my old district from way back). In her case, some of the rapists were so certain that they could not be prosecuted that they laid down in bed beside her. In any case, for having been raped, she was told if she tried to get help she would lose her job. Many women have since come out and admitted to having been raped in Iraq.

"Parents – check your boys – what do they REALLY think about women?"

This is so true. Let me clarify: This statement is correct. Yes, the parents share a huge responsibility. The grander problem is the "bully" culture from the original great American Posse/mob culture; which means that individually and collectively they are all cowards.

Great choice of issue, well written.

Rated.

Thank you Mrs. Raptor and RenaissanceLady for filling me in on KBR. Ye gods! When rape becomes company policy!!! (more or less). It's so horrific that I want to put my fingers in my ears and sing lalalalala. How will can the Western World EVER become civilized?

"and the school recently approved surveillance cameras after a series of violent crimes. "

Yeah, Cameras. That'll fix it.

Right, ME, surveillance cameras with kids in hoodies. That'll help identify violent crime. Too late, not enough.

As I read this, I kept thinking, "In Canada? Really?" I should have known better.

I think it could have happened here too, Steve.