I read in the paper that a girl aged around 18 was punched and kicked to the ground in a busy town centre >

Question

Midday and no one stopped to help her even when the attacker walked off people just carried on about their live, Why are people like this?

Answer 1

i've just gone through this "whats the world coming to", today...
I live in perth, australia and an 8 year old girl was raped and murdered in the public toilets at the shops by this 21 year old and a few weeks ago a 16 year old girl was murdered and buried by her 2 16 year old "friends"
It disgusts me we share air with these people, who knows why all this stuff happens?? people are just fucked up!

Answer 2

I'm a woman and I'd help someone in that situation but only if the attacker had gone. Sometimes these situations can turn around though. It could be a 'domestic' and if say, a man, helps the girl and the boyfriend comes back she could take his side and they could both have a go at the helper. People just don't want to get involved in anything. They have a self preservation bubble round them.
Something similar happened to me when I was in my 20s. A man (drunk or drugged) walked past me and punched me on my shoulder knocking me down to the ground. He was quite small (I'm only small myself) but as I was getting up (very gingerly cause my legs were shaking and I could barely stand) I looked across the road and there were men also coming home from work and totally ignored me. I wanted someone just to come over and ask if I was OK. No-one bothered. It's a sad life.

Answer 3

I think you find it's a mixture of fear and disinterest! Frea because some people worry that the attacker might turn on them, disinterest because nowadays, people seem uncaring! They do not want to get invovled. Some assume the worse, and simply walk away. You must remember that there have been a few people killed, simply because they tried to give assistance to someone being attacked. That would scare off a lot of people.

I think it is a disgrace that, in this day and age when most city centres are under the watchful eye of surveillance cameras ... There is no one watching such attack, to come out and stop it!

Answer 4

A major factor here is that, as in any social situation, people will tend to look towards other people for confirmation of the correct response or how to act. If one person walks past and ignores a violent attack others are quite likely to do the same.

Also, it's possible that the incident refers to a contemporary moral code in society which says that if something bad is happening to someone else and you have no direct responsibility in the situation then it is morally reasonable to ignore the situation. I don't like this but I think it is part of the moral code of our society and is not an issue that should be shirked.

Answer 5

Same thing happened to me once. I was skateboarding in Maidstone (Kent) and got set upon by 5 chavy C##TS. They beat the living crap out of me for the simple fact that I was a skateboarder. This took place in a very public space, in the middle of town, on a Saturday at about 2pm. There were loads of people walking past at the time and they all just kept on going. Even when I was laying there with blood pissing out my head they just kept on going. Had to drive my self to the hospital!!!!

However 6 months later I went back to that same spot and one of the girls that was with the Chavs when the attack happened saw me and came and spoke to me. She told me that 3 of the attackers had recently stolen a car, smashed it into a lamp post and died!!! As you can imagine my reaction was a mixture of sadness and joy... but mostly joy.

Instant Karma's gonna get ya baby!!!!

As to why they do it?... it's cos they are dumb ***, sad, pathetic F##KS

Answer 6

Because they are spineless, worthless shi*s! The fear that they felt in no way should have kept them from helping. People like that are the first to write into the local press etc saying "ooh you cant feel safe anymore.....blah blah...." when its inaction like this that lets filth like the one who beat the girl up feel able to do so.
Its a sad world & if I had seen it I would have given the attacker a bloody good kicking - If I had lost well at least I could look myself in the mirror

Answer 7

I dun know the law about thi in the US, over here its something called non assistance to people in danger. Basically we had a girl raped in the metro, they didnt catch the rapers but the 3 people that where in the train but did not do anything got 9 years prison... same as if they did participate. One poor guy was 70 years old

Answer 8

People don't want to get involved in other people's dramas - They're not sure where it will lead them, or how it will inconvenience them.

Got a personal experience of this too. New Year's Eve ten years ago, I got separated from my friends and had to walk home. Some guy attacked me, kicked the living daylights out of me and I fell unconscious on the floor on a busy sidewalk.

Some minutes later, I woke up and realised my ankle was broken. I begged a passerby to help me as I couldn't stand up on it. "You'd better F**king stand up or i'm gonna kick your head in", they said. I tried, fell down again, and they made good on their promise, leaving me unconscious again till the police came along.

It's just the nature of people - they're capable of amazing, creative, passionate, positive things...and of callous bug-crushing behaviour to their fellow human beings too. We're a strange species when you come right down to it...

Answer 9

There's the fear of getting hurt if they do try to step in. There could be racial influences (were there different ethnicity's involved?). Also, in big cities, people are crowded in so closely, that they tend to develop this little bubble of isolation where they don't recognize or acknowledge others. I remember being told that if a person is attacked, yell 'Fire!', not 'Help'....cause people will come to see a fire, but won't come to help. Sad, isn't it?

Answer 10

In the 60s there was a nurse killed in a parking lot. She screamed and people listened, but did nothing. Of all the witnesses, each claimed they did not call the police because they assumed someone else would do it. In general, people don't want to get involved because they don't want what they perceive as complications.