Article - Whither goes the spirit of Help and Rescue?

A 15-year old girl was gang raped in front of an online audience in Chicago. Her assault was broadcasted on Facebook live by the assaulters and watched by at least 40 viewers at a time, but nobody contacted the police¹.

Shocking news was on the Yahoo home page on 24.03.2017. We are often reading about or viewing various social network sites streaming live the plight of accident victims begging for help and the impersonal bystanders. The by standers sometimes are busy inhumanly video recording the ordeal of the helpless victims. Why does this happen? To check about this phenomenon, I went back to Google! Here is what I learnt.

According to Social Psychologists this phenomena is called as the bystander effect, or bystander apathy. This social psychological phenomenon refers to cases in which individuals do not offer any means of help to a victim when other people are present. The probability of help is inversely related to the number of bystanders. In other words, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help. Several variables help to explain why the bystander effect occurs. These variables include: ambiguity, cohesiveness and diffusion of responsibility.

Genovese Syndrome

Being a silent bystander to a crime is called Genovese syndrome. It's the phenomenon described by psychologists that the more people who are watching an attack or some perilous situation befall a victim, the less likely any one of them will intervene.

Multiple studies in the 1960s and since then made other observations, including that bystanders were even less likely to intervene if they were strangers than if they were friends. Some studies suggested crowds were less likely to act because each individual rationalises that someone else in the crowd would act or already had.

Some parts of the world have included laws that hold bystanders responsible when they witness an emergency. In the US, Good Samaritan laws have been implemented to protect bystanders who acted in good faith. Many organizations are including bystander training. For example, the United States Department of the Army is doing bystander training with respect to sexual assault. Some organizations routinely do bystander training with respect to safety issues. Others have been doing bystander training with respect to diversity issues. Organizations such as American universities are also using bystander research to improve bystander attitudes in cases of rape. Examples include the Inter Act Sexual Assault Prevention program and the Green Dot program².

Green Dot Bystander Intervention is an approach to prevent violence with the help of bystanders built on the premise that violence can be measurably and systematically reduced within a community. Bystander intervention as a way of violence prevention programs is becoming popular within society. Its Mission is to reduce power based-violence by being a proactive bystander and a reactive bystander³.

The Green Dot Bystander Intervention Program was founded by Dr. Dorothy Edwards. The program trains people about sexual assault and domestic violence on college campuses, primary and secondary schools, and communities. It develops and offers training for sexual assault and domestic violence. The method teaches students to intervene by using the 3'Ds: Direct, Delegating the responsibility to others, and creating a Distraction to defuse a potentially dangerous situation. As described by Green Dot an example of this is in a situation at a party, intervening could mean that instead of calling out an inebriated student, an individual can create a distraction by "accidentally" spilling their drink on a potential aggressor.

Dr. Dorothy Edwards is the founder of the Green Dot Bystander Intervention program. Prior to creating the program Dorothy Edwards worked as the University of Kentucky's Violence Intervention and Prevention Director where she discovered that individuals were not sure how to respond when witnessing a potential sexual assault. In her first year of running the program she trained 10 individuals, but by the time she left the University of Kentucky she was training 3,500 students and volunteers. The initiative led by Dr. Edwards was supported by a new focus on bystanders in The White House. Green Dot, Bringing in the Bystander, and ‘Coaching Boys Into Men’ are preventative bystander programs that have begun to make cultural changes³.

In India, The Supreme Court on 30th March 2016 approved the guidelines issued by the Centre for the protection of Good Samaritans at the hands of the police or any other authority. These guidelines are with specific reference to helping the victims of accidents⁴. Karnataka Government has taken the lead by enacting the Law to protect the Good Samaritan.

After going through all this information, my opinion is that enacting a Law will not be sufficient to motivate an unconcerned bystander to become a proactive bystander and a reactive bystander. There is a need to train people to become the proactive and a reactive bystander. There is a need to begin such initiative as done by Dr. Dorothy Edwards amidst us too. The safe techniques to help women in distress needs to be imparted to the volunteers.

 - Dr. Suman K Murthy

Reference:

¹ https://in.news.yahoo.com/gangrape-streamed-live-facebook-watched-054125907.html retrieved on 24.03.2017

² https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bystander_effect retrieved on 24.03.2017

³ Cherkis, Jason, and Ryan Grim. "Here's How You Can Help Stop A Sexual Assault Before It Happens." The Huffington Post 9 July 2015, Politics sec.  Web. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/07/08/bystander-intervention_n_7758118.html retrieved on 24.03.2017

⁴ https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-status-of-Good-Samaritan-laws-in-India retrieved on 24.03.2017.

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