Whether or not you are a parent, you must watch the video below and learn from the message it is portraying...... sorry I can only find the Facebook link.

What would you do if you saw a child struggling with a man, and shouting "you're not my father"......... would you help????

Watch the video and be shocked........ (ignore the usual idiot comments there though..... just watch the video)


http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php ... 1&comments


I can't stress how important this is, and how useless the majority of people seem to be.

Its unbelievable how many people did nothing.............

2:24 - respect to the two guys who finally did the right thing.

Sadly, this is nothing new. Welcome to the interesting(from a clinical point of view) social constructs called "bystander effect" and "diffusion of responsibility".

See: The murder of in front of thirty eight witnesses, for some more information and links to more information about the social research that came of it.

Best advice to date:
Teach your kids to look for someone who could help and call to them specifically e.g. "You with the blue top. Help me!"
This interrupts the 'anonymous bystander' syndrome and draws the other person into the situation.

Watching this turns my blood cold. I have a 3 year old daughter and another about 2 weeks out, the thought of anything happening to either scares me to death. We're also in the Salt Lake Valley, practically within stones throw of where Elizabeth Smart was kidnapped less than a decade ago.

Yeah, it's a shite situation, having more to do with perceived threat than real threat.... Actual violent crime has been dropping for decades, it's just that there is more sensational, pervasive reporting of it. Entire CHANNELS devoted to "True Crime", police procedural shows and nearly-fictional creations like serial killers.

"If it bleeds, it leads"

I am reminded of that 4 year old kid that wandered away and was seen by motorists on a rural road in the UK. One guy thought about stopping to help this obviously lost and alone child, but did not want to be seen bundling a less than cooperative kid into his car, so he drove on. The kid fell into water and perished...

I have to say I would not have stopped either.

However, I would have intervened if I had a female with me to do the talking, or if I was directly asked in any situation.

Intervening in any public fracas is generally inadvisable. Even though I was raised to be chivalrous and polite, I always avoid public violence. The best I could do is to take pictures or video, even that carried risks.

One of my buddies saw a couple in a car, the guy was screaming and slapping her while they yelled loudly. He banged on the window to confront the guy and they BOTH exited the car and turned on HIM!! He barely got away...

I was a bouncer in New Orleans for a while and it's true, in a domestic abuse situation that is public like that, they are both in it to win it, and you just need to call the cops on both of them.

I believe in chivalry, but chivalry requires an environment that is not so ready to attack good Samaritans.