To Help or Not To Help

There’s been a bit of talk about the woman who failed to help the young girl who was later raped.

MacDoctor was disgusted.

However appalling his actions, I can’t help being more disgusted by the inaction of the woman to whom the 13-year-old appealed for help. What kind of person does not respond to the plea for help of a 13-year-old girl being stalked by a stranger? Could she not have offered to take the girl home? Or, at least, call her father and stay with her until he came? She could have even enlisted the BP garage attendant help to look after her until her father came. It seems beyond belief that she suggested that the girl should stay away from the man and then drove off.

Of course, we do not yet know all the facts. There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for her actions, but, on the face of it, they are crassly insensitive and appallingly indifferent.

If this woman’s attitude is at all prevalent in society, it is unsurprising that we have an epidemic of child and spouse abuse and skyrocketing violent crime. If we wish to tackle these things as a society, we need to abandon our indifference, overcome our fears and help each other.

When my wife first told me that such a person existed, I was equally disgusted. I thought I would help without hesitation.

Then I pondered why this woman might have done what she did.

Put yourself in her shoes. She’s driving home, minding her own business. Then, some random girl approaches her acting irrational (always a good start) claiming that a strange man is stalking her in broad daylight. Doesn’t sound very likely does it?

To add to all this, anyone with any level of skepticism might at this point be forgiven for wondering why she at this point…

• did not call the police with her own cellphone (everyone carries one)
• did not seek help from the petrol station, including calling the police from the station
• did not call her own parents

Unfortunately, we live in a world where people abuse the generosity of others. Its most probable that this woman looked a the situation and decided she was more likely to be a victim herself than a savior.

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