Thread: Woman allegedly raped in St. Paul as bystanders look on

I seen story on TV this afternoon...only report I seen ON TV
SAID NO ONE REPORTED IT...BECAUSE THEY WERE IMMIGRANTS ..
THE REPORTER THEY INTERVIEWED CALLED THEM ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS AND AFRAID TO CALL POLICE.
NONE OF THE FEW NEWS ARTICLES ON-LINE REPORTED SUCH.STATUS..

Saint Paul, Minnesota
Woman allegedly raped in St. Paul as bystanders look on

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Woman allegedly raped in St. Paul as bystanders look on


A 26-year-old man was charged Thursday for allegedly raping and beating a woman in an apartment hallway -- an incident apparently witnessed by several people who did nothing, police say, to help the alleged victim.

Charged with two counts of rape, Rage Ibrahim turned himself in to Ramsey County authorities Thursday afternoon.

"Ibrahim is innocent of rape he said," says Omar Jamal with the Somali Justice Center, speaking on behalf of Ibrahim

It all started Tuesday morning at a Saint Paul apartment complex. According to the criminal complaint, police responded to a call of intoxicated people in the hallway. When they arrived, they found Ibrahim and a 26-year-old woman, both naked from the waist down. The woman told police she was drugged and raped. Police say the alleged attack was captured by the building's security camera.

"It shows the suspect striking the victim," says St. Paul Police spokesperson Tom Walsh.

And police say the tape also shows something else - as many as ten people who saw the alleged attack, but did nothing.

"They simply walked down the hall and turned back.ducked back into their doorway," says Walsh.

Police say the alleged assault lasted 30 minutes and no attempt was made to help the woman and there was no immediate call to 911.

"Clearly people observed what was going on, but for whatever reason chose not to call police," says Walsh.

Psychologists say the reason may be found in the human thought process. It's called the bystander effect. John Tauer teaches social psychology at the University of St. Thomas.

"The more bystanders that are around, the less likely any one is going to help. If 50 people are in a crowd, each one feels little responsibility," says Tauer.

And often times Tauer says, people may be afraid to step in or are confused about what they've seen.

"People look to others for cues and they say is this an emergency? Now, by all accounts it seems that was pretty clear, yet as people look around in these situations and you see other people poking their heads out, you sort of think well, if he or she is not coming out of their apartment, maybe it's not an emergency," says Tauer.

Professor Tauer says psychologists have studied this behavior for years. They say it's not an unusual human response.

Psychologists often point to the case of Kitty Genovese who was murdered outside her New York apartment in 1964. More than 30 people watched it happen, but no one stepped in or called for help right away.

In the Saint Paul case, police say when someone finally called them no one said anything about a rape in progress.

The call came in as a disturbance, intoxicated people in the hallway. That kind of call is a lower police priority than calls about violent crime.
By Trisha Volpe, KARE 11 News

Copyright 2007 by KARE. All Rights Reserved.)

Were they all illegal, so they didn't want to call? Gosh, you make an anonymous call.

Another horrible crime ... Just one of the countless this week that did not have to happen.

I believe the bystander effect is also the reason American's are standing by and watching their country being stolen out from under them.

your both right..
it didn't say how many were illegal...just said that they were

Police: 10 Witness Rape, Do Nothing

ST. PAUL, Minn., Aug. 24, 2007

(AP) A security video from an apartment hallway shows at least 10 witnesses ignored a woman's cries for help for more than an hour as a man beat and sexually assaulted her, prosecutors in Minnesota said.

The surveillance video clearly showed men and women looking out their apartment doors or starting to walk down the hallway before retreating as the woman was assaulted for nearly 90 minutes, police spokesman Tom Walsh said.

Police said they responded to a call of drunken behavior and found Somali immigrant Rage Ibrahim, 25, and a woman lying unconscious in the hallway early Tuesday. The woman's clothing had been pulled up and she had fresh scratches on her face and blood on her thigh, according to the criminal complaint.

Ibrahim says he is innocent and that the incident was a misunderstanding, according to Omar Jamal, the executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center, who spoke on Ibrahim's behalf.

Ibrahim was charged with several counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct, prosecutors said.

Walsh said police were shocked by the behavior of the bystanders.

"(The video) shows one person looking out of her door probably three times," Walsh said. "It shows another person walking up, observing what's going on, then turning and putting up the hood of his sweatshirt."

At one point, the 26-year-old woman knocked on a door, yelling for the occupants to call police. A man inside that apartment told police he did not open the door or look out, but said he did call police — although they have no record of his call, according to court documents.

Minnesota law makes it a petty misdemeanor to not give reasonable help to a person in danger of "grave physical harm."

Walsh said it is unlikely police would pursue charges against witnesses in this case because authorities would have to show that witnesses knew the woman was in extreme danger.

Jamal said Ibrahim went into the hallway after the woman because he thought she was too drunk to drive. They struggled over car keys, and "he is saying there was a huge misunderstanding," Jamal said, adding that the police report does not show "the truth of what happened that night."

"He did not rape her," Jamal said.

© MMVII The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/08/ ... 0634.shtml