Internet (Evidence)

The thing is, these people who committed this crime are not “animals”, “monsters”, or otherwise sick in the mind. I get from the tone of these comments that a lot of people would like to see nothing but the most severe retribution meted out to these perpetrators, including the bystanders. But what makes this crime so sickening is the idea that so many boys watched the assault happen and thought that it was normal and not particularly alarming, and didn’t feel the need to interfere, because they didn’t want to make waves.

That’s what’s scary about this, because of how easily easily these “normal” kids (you can’t argue that ALL 15 of the bystanders and perpetrators were psychopathic delinquents) helped commit an act of great evil. That the desire to appear cool can lead to such horrible acts is more horrifying than the fact that there are real and genuine monsters walking among us. We can isolate and quarantine the Goebbels of the world, but what about the Eichmanns — those ordinary people who can commit monstrous acts simply by conforming to the norms of their society?

The perpetrator here includes the culture that allowed this gang-rape to happen so openly. It doesn’t take away from their guilt of the individual rapists (especially those who instigated this crime), but it certainly doesn’t mean that we should consider our job done if we exact our revenge upon these boys. That won’t change anything, because for all we know, the forces that caused these kids to act the way they did might one day cause our bothers, sons, or partners (who we all know to otherwise be good human beings) to act in a similar fashion.