By Alan Gomez, USA TODAY Police investigating the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl outside a school dance are finding that a California law may make it impossible to prosecute as many as 20 people who saw the rape and did nothing. A state statute requires that people must report to police any information they have about the sexual assault of children under the age of 14. There is no law requiring people do the same for victims over that age. "The fact that our victim missed that age by a very short time …" said Richmond Police Lt. Mark Gagan. "It's just very offensive that there's no statute we can use to show that we condemn their behavior." Gagan said the assault began inside a homecoming dance Saturday night at Richmond High School. He said the girl was taken to a dark, remote corner on the campus and raped by as many as 10 males. Gagan said Wednesday that police have arrested five males — between the ages of 15 and 21— and charged four of them with rape and enhancements that they acted in concert, which could make them eligible for life in prison. Gagan said he expected more arrests this week. The attack put this industrial suburb of San Francisco in the national spotlight. Home to numerous refineries and loading docks, Richmond was ranked as the ninth most dangerous city in the USA in 2008, according to Morgan Quitno Press, a research company that tracks criminal data. Gagan said up to 20 onlookers came and went but that no one called police until a woman overheard two witnesses talking about the attack and she reported it. The case drew comparisons to other high-profile cases where groups of people fail to report heinous crimes, a phenomenon dubbed the "bystander effect." According to the theory, the likelihood that a witness reaches out for help decreases as the number of witnesses increase. One notorious example of the phenomenon took place in Queens, N.Y., in 1964, when Kitty Genovese was attacked in the courtyard of an apartment complex. Numerous residents heard or saw portions of the attack and did nothing, though some details have been disputed. Studies have found that people in such situations either think someone else has called police, fear getting involved, or fail to help for other reasons. David Hyman, a University of Illinois law professor who has studied the bystander effect, said the biggest misconception about such situations is that they happen often. Hyman studied decades worth of data and found that no more than two people die each year because of a failure to attempt a rescue — either of a victim of a crime or of a natural occurrence, like drowning. By comparison, Americans perform over 1,000 "non-risky" and about 260 "risky" rescue attempts each year. "We do have a problem: People too often get involved in circumstances that place the life of the rescuer at risk," he said. However, in the Richmond case, Hyman said there was no doubt that someone should have called police immediately. Eugene Volokh, a University of California-Los Angeles law professor, said the reaction to crimes involving disinterested bystanders is a call for a law requiring witnesses to report crimes. He said those kinds of laws only exist in a handful of states and for good reason. In the case of the California law, the crime carries a maximum six months in prison. Volokh said making the failure to report a crime a crime itself can seriously undermine the intent of the law. Many times people don't report a crime until some time has passed — maybe their guilt convinces them to call police, maybe they don't think a crime is occurring but later see a call from police for information. Those people may not come forward if doing so would be admitting to a crime. "This makes it much less likely that they will testify later or that they'll talk to police later," Volokh found. Peter Arenella, a UCLA law professor who studies the moral psychology of juveniles, believes the bystander effect should not even apply to the Richmond gang rape. "In this context, when you're talking about a crime this horrific, and you're talking about a group of adolescents watching, there's much more serious pathology going on that can't be explained by, 'Someone else is going to call for help,' " Arenella said. | |
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Dense Population of Sex
Offenders in Fla. Case Is
Alarmingly Typical
Density of Offenders Near Home of Somer
Thompson, 7, Missing Since Monday, Is Not Unusual
By RUSSELL GOLDMAN
Oct. 21, 2009—
There are so many sex offenders living within blocks of
where 7-year-old Somer Thompson vanished Monday
that when their homes are represented by pins on a
digital map they create a cluster so thick it overlaps in places.
Law enforcement officials have interviewed at least 75 registered
sex offenders who live within a 5-mile radius of the second
grader's home on Orange Park, Fla., but state officials say
there are some 161 convicted offenders in that area.
Experts say despite what appears to be an extraordinary concentration,
the number of local offenders is actually quite typical for an area
so close to a major city. Most people, they say, have no idea
just how many sex offenders are living in their neighborhood.
"In spite of appearing it to be a lot, that's about average,"
said Ron Book, a Florida lawyer who lobbies for tougher
sex-offender legislation. "Some areas have hundreds of offenders."
According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement,
which maintains the state's sex offender registry, there are some
82 sex offenders living with a 3-mile radius of Somer's home in
Orange Park, a suburb of Jacksonville, and 161 registered
offenders within a 5 mile radius.
By contrast there are 10 McDonald's restaurants in the same 5 mile radius.
State officials would not comment on whether they believed 161 offenders
in the area was a high or moderate density.
But Professor David Finkelhor, director of the Crimes against Children
Research Center at the University of New Hampshire, agreed that
161 sex offenders in a 5-mile area that included parts of a major
city is not necessarily a high density.
"Different states have different policies about what level of
sex offenders are required to register. You can have over
1,000 offenders in an urban area without much difficulty.
It sounds scary to people, but many states have registration
regimes that include people who are not all that dangerous," he said.
The 5-mile radius around Somer's home in 1700 block of Horton Dr.
in Orange Park includes parts of the city of Jacksonville,
the largest and most populous city in Florida.
There are some 53,201 registered sex offenders in the entire
state of Florida. Of those, 318 live in Clay County, where
Orange Park is located and an additional 1,671 live in Duvall County,
where Jacksonville is located.
The ratio of residents to sex offenders in Jacksonville is estimated at 486 to 1.
Of the 161 offenders in the area, 16 are classified as predators,
which generally means the offender was convicted of a first-degree
felony sex offense many of which involve the molestation of children.
Laws about where sex offenders are allowed to live vary from
county to county and depend on the severity and nature of the
crime for which the criminal was convicted.
Book said sex offenders often cluster together in part because
of laws that restrict the places in which they can live.
Though high concentrations of offenders appear to be problematic,
high densities actually help police.
"Some laws have forced clustering. While that appears to have a
downside, some say it's a good thing from a law enforcement
prospective. If you have clustering its easier for parole,
probation and police officials to keep track of them," he said.
Some offenders are not permitted to live within 1,000 feet
of a school or are banned from activities like distributing candy
on Halloween, said Mike Morrison spokesman for the Florida
Department of Law Enforcement.
Ten registered offenders live within 1 mile of Somer's school,
Grove Park Elementary, a 10-minute walk from her home.
Finkelhor said sex offenders tend to have lower recidivism
rates than other felons, and many of the worst crimes are
committed by first-time offenders. However, he said,
it's well worth law enforcement officials' time to interview offenders
who have a history of crimes against children.
"One of the best and most important uses of registries is as
tool of law enforcement, so they can identify individuals
who have committed similar crimes. It is important to check
those people out."
The little girl's body was discovered in a garbage dump
used to dispose of trash from her part of town.
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