WUNRN
USA
- A Rape Witnessed, A Rape Ignored
When
a woman is attacked in a St. Paul, Minnesota, USA apartment hallway, only
one man tries to help. Many others turn their backs.
BY
MARA H. GOTTFRIED
Pioneer Press
08/23/2007
As many as 10 people witnessed a man raping and beating a woman early Tuesday in the hallway of a St. Paul apartment building, police said Wednesday.
No one stopped it.
At one point, the 26-year-old victim knocked on a door, yelling for the occupants to call police. A man inside told police he didn't open the door or look out, though he said he called police. Police found no record of the call, according to an affidavit for a search warrant filed in Ramsey County District Court.
St. Paul police arrested Rage Ibrahim, 25, on suspicion of criminal sexual conduct Tuesday. He hasn't been charged.
"It was horrifying. I can't describe how it sent chills up my back, watching this woman getting assaulted and people turning their backs and doing nothing," said St. Paul police Cmdr. Shari Gray, who oversees the department's sex crimes unit.
She saw surveillance video that recorded the attack in the Highwood neighborhood.
As the woman screamed, five to 10 people - men and women - peeked out their apartment doors to see what was happening or started walking down the hallway and retreated after witnessing the assault, Gray said.
When someone did call police to 371 S. Winthrop Ave., the caller reported drunken people in a hallway, not a violent assault, so the 911 dispatcher classified it as a "disturbance," Gray said.
The first 911 call came at 2:43 a.m. Tuesday, and police arrived at 3:25 a.m., she said.
"That was a significant time lapse, but it would have been cut down significantly" had the caller described the attack differently, Gray said.
Emergency calls in St. Paul are assigned priority numbers from 1 to 4, indicating how quickly police must respond.
The caller's account triggered a "priority four," rather than a "priority two," assigned to violent crimes in progress, said Tom Walsh, a police spokesman.
"Priority one" is assigned only to calls of a police officer down, Walsh said.
"The reason we prioritize calls is we don't have enough bodies to answer all of them," Walsh said. Officers are instructed to respond as quickly as they can, he said.
The case is reminiscent of one seared in the American memory - the 1964 Kitty Genovese murder in New York.
Genovese was stabbed to death outside a Queens apartment building while many people looked on from their windows but didn't step in to help. When one person called police, Genovese reportedly was already dead.
The "Genovese syndrome" - or bystander effect - describes the mind-set that might have been at work in the St. Paul case. The larger the number of people who witness a crime, the less likely any one person is to jump in and assist, said Steve Prentice-Dunn, a psychology professor at the University of Alabama.
"It's mainly because when a number of people are looking, they don't feel as individually responsible for what's going on," he said. "That's the reason why there is not safety in numbers, in terms of the bystander effect."
Another factor could be that people faced with emergencies don't think as carefully and logically as they normally would, Prentice-Dunn said.
People also tend to question themselves about whether they are "reading the situation correctly," he said.
"You don't want to be embarrassed by jumping in and doing something unnecessary," Prentice-Dunn said. "When onlookers are interviewed after something like this happens, it's amazing how often people say: 'I wasn't sure what was happening. I wasn't sure if this was a quarrel I shouldn't get involved with.' "
And the element of fear - for the bystanders' own safety - can't be forgotten, he said.
The man arrested in the St. Paul case and the victim knew each other, Gray said. Apparently, neither lived in the building.
According to the search warrant affidavit:
When police arrived, they found Ibrahim and a woman on the floor in a hallway, both naked from the waist down.
The woman appeared to have blood on her legs and injuries to her face. Ibrahim told the officers they were just drunk, but the crying woman told them Ibrahim had drugged and raped her.
Paramedics took the woman to Regions Hospital in St. Paul for a sexual assault examination and to be treated for her injuries.
The surveillance video shows Ibrahim and the woman leaving an apartment, and Ibrahim standing over the woman and removing his pants.
A man approached Ibrahim and the woman at one point, the video shows. Ibrahim got up, confronted the man and, with no pants on, chased him down the hallway. Ibrahim then returned to the woman.
The video also shows Ibrahim striking the woman five times.
When police interviewed the woman at the hospital, she said two men she knew only by nicknames, John and Gomay, had brought her to the apartment.
She said she wanted to leave, but Gomay wanted to have sex with her. She refused, she said, but Gomay assaulted her and then raped her. She said John had tried to intervene at one point.
A judge granted a search warrant for the apartment Ibrahim and the woman had been in.
Mara H. Gottfried covers St. Paul public safety. She can be reached at mgottfried@pioneerpress.com or 651-228-5262.
Police ask anyone who witnessed the rape and assault to call 651-266-5685.
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