Please elaborate?
Witnesses of violent crimes can be victims as well. Witnesses are not to blame for the crime committed, even if they saw it happen. End of.
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given that there were loads of drugs and alcohol were present, why would anyone think that Joan Jett has any real recollection of what really happened - either that night or 30 years later? hell, she could have PTSDâed it out of her mind even without mind altering substances.
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Thus all Germans were victims of a few SS busy bodies? As were the majority of the poor âcamp staffâ mere victims, tasked with exterminating other victims, and of course the rail workers who shifted the âraw materialâ for the ovens in the Concentration Camp. All just victims, made to watch, no agency, no choice.
Far more complex than some like to pretend.
Anyone who has tried to function in a dictatorship, be it political e.g. USSR, or capitalist e.g. Lehman Brothers or it seems various US Police Departments will have a more nuanced view.
You canât at once cry wolf when Police Officers donât restrain their despotic colleagues as they kill unarmed black men in a racist frenzy, while insisting that 10, 20, 30? people at a party watching a drugged, unconscious girl being raped, have no capacity to intervene.
I am not equating teenage girlsâ agency with that of Police Officers per se but I am pointing out that when the issue is abuse of power, simple categories of good and evil do not work. Every single conscious being present has the capacity to change eventsâpretending otherwise is abdicating humansâ responsibility.
I think that is end of. For me.
EDIT: because hate writing on stupid tablets.
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Mod note: Stay on topic.
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[quote=âjonathanpeterso, post:48, topic:61437, full:trueâ]
Child rape? maybe not. Glorification of sex with minors? Oh hell yes. Rock stars boning underage groupies was a HUGE part of the 70s rock culture - how could you pretend otherwise?[/quote]
There are plenty of examples in rock culture before the 70s and after the 70s, both in the lyrics themselves and in the actual way people in the industry treated young girls. Groupie culture got its name in the 60s, but probably goes back to the 40s.
My post was a response to someone who was claiming that society as a whole (not just the music industry) had some kind of special decade of sleaziness in the 70s, a statement that was somehow tied into the posterâs relationship with his or her father.
What is this?
I think likely many of the bystanders were also victims to afraid to speak up or do anything because this shitty excuse for a person had been emotionally and/or physically abusing them as well. I agree that just because they were also victims doesnât mean there is any excuse to not do anything when this sort of shit is happening, but I can also understand why/how they could retreat into the same mental place they likely had to when being victimized themselves. Which in a way tragically further enabled this sort of behavior. It isnât so binary.
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confirmed in other articles about this:
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[quote=âanon67050589, post:71, topic:61437, full:trueâ]
What is this?[/quote]
Post #5. (Not your post, if that was what you were thinking.)
[quote=âsimonize, post:40, topic:61437â]
I asked you: âHow were the people who didnât speak out and/or stop the rape the victims?â[/quote]
I think it IS fair to say that everyone who witnessed this rape, knew it was wrong, but didnât speak out because they felt it would bring some harm to them - be it ostracism, loss of income, jeopardization of their future, or immediate physical peril - was victimized by this man in that room that night. I am not implying that selfish calculation excuses complicity. I simply mean that the people in the room were placed in a situation where diffusion of responsibility (yes itâs a thing, read the article) combined with personal risk and personal weaknesses to prevent them from stopping the rape, and guilt about their failure to act added to the aforementioned issues kept them from speaking up after. Aside from anyone in the room who knew it was wrong but didnât care, or anyone who was actually enjoying it (wow, it was physically difficult to write those words), I think everyone there was victimized by that monstrous rapist.
Also, the comparisons to nazism are off the mark because this was a single violent act as opposed to, say, working in a concentration camp. (To clarify, I am not suggesting this man only did this once, just that for most of the people present this was a singular incident.)
Edited because I messed up the quote featureâŚ
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That is not confirmation but justification! I donât see why they, the girls who left the scene, couldnât raise the alarm and talk to someone trustworthy. I would very much hope that in a similar situation my daughtersâ peers would talk to us, someone.
What seems extraordinary to me is that all those involved accepted the narrative set by the perpetrator, denying all humanity to the victim.
How unfree do you have to be to not seek a space and opportunity to publicly validate your own experience of such a wrong for decades and instead pretend for 40 years that nothing happened and / or laugh along the mocking stories told of the crime.
I very much doubt this was a single, out of character act within this millieu, as so many have pointed out it was part of a pervasive culture and Fawley clearly was among the leaders of that culture.
It is an extraordinary sign of the pervasivness of this culture that those involved didnât seem to want to, or be able to, insist for their version of events to be publicly heard for 40 years, while the perpetrators version was widely shared, thus implictly accepting the publicly dominant narrative. Tellingly, all this has come out after Fowley has died.
That is extraordinary and the dynamics of such a situation in which for 40 years those involved accept a public version of events which they know to be wrong is comparable to the dynamics of dictatorship and cultures which facilitate genocides (e.g.the nazis). The scale is not the same but the dynamics of peoplesâ behaviour in such situation are comparable.
âdidnât speak out because they felt it would bring some harm to them - be it ostracism, loss of income, jeopardization of their future, or immediate physical peril - was victimized by this man in that room that night.â
This is key to this issue (well quite a few issues) ⌠fear of harm. I think it becomes a choice at this point - who is facing the greater harm? The passed out teenager getting raped, ridiculed and brutalized or the person who might suffer loss of income, being ostracized, etc. Not everyone is strong enough (or mature enough, or âŚinsert your choice of adjectiveâŚ) to risk personal harm of any sort to help someone else and that is really a shame.
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If you truly do not understand this, youâre much more naive than you think, and in a way that could be dangerous to the children in your life.
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Confirmation that other people in the room were also victims of this man, which is what I was clearly talking about. If you bothered reading my previous reply to you, youâd see I clearly say that is isnât justification, but also go on to explain that this isnât so binary as you are trying to make it.
You are coming from the privileged place of retrospect in your judgment towards the the other children in the room. Many of them were emancipated, and at this time in history, there wasnât yet any educational messaging reinforcing that reporting such behaviors would be supported. Sure, through the goggles of today Iâd hope people would report such behavior as well, but Iâm not so naive to apply those to something that happened then.
Her friend didnât know what to do, was also abused by this guy, was too young to drive (14), and there were no cell phones or other devices at this time, and this was a time period where the cops were much more likely to believe the rich white adult male over a young girl.
NO ONE is justifying this horrific act. Most of us are blaming the perpetrator while withholding blame for other victims. What does blaming the other victims accomplish? I suggest having some compassion for all the victims.
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Please read the article, in it Jackie Fox tells, how a year after the rape, she called her Mother from Japan to get her out of the band and Fowleyâs circle of destruction.
And her Mother came and got her out of there. So actually the importnace of knowing that you have adults / parents who can help you was a pretty key part of the story, and in my experience is a key part of many peopleâs story who have experinced trauma.
Obviously, not when the parents are the ones inflicting the trauma, but in most other cases, teaching your children that you are there for them, no matter how awful life gets, is a key part of parenting.
Thank you for your concern for the children in my life, but having been at it for 20 years I think I will continue with my strategy to instill in my children the capacity to seek help when help is required and to be discerning enough to know who is worthy of their trust.
It doesnât seize to amaze me how fast people on the internet feel ready to judge othersâ life work (parenting has been one of mine) on the basis of a few posts.
WHICH is why we put these sort of messages out NOW, and educate people that they do have safe places to go and can report such crimes. We do that NOW because of the lessons we learned during this time period when we did no such thing.
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I guarantee you that you do not know of every time the children in your care were in a dangerous situation. You think theyâve got perfect discretion because you taught them? Thatâs a rather clueless statement for a supposedly veteran parent to make.
Besides, with regard to this particular story, itâs important to point out that predators pick their victims carefully. There will always be people who donât have parents or other loved ones who can be trusted to protect them. Who have been raised in such a way that they donât know how to defend themselves effectively. Iâd say a 14-year-old who has to call her mother in Japan to say âgee, Iâve been in a really dangerous situation for a year now, come help meâ would have been recognizable from the beginning as an easy mark for such a predator.
Itâs useful to think about violent crimes as being due to the predatorâs actions, not those of the victim(s).
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And in the UK even the security services are still covering up for child rapists with establishment links. No help there.
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Not sure if my English is so poor, or you are purposefully misinterpreting what I have written: I have not said, nor would I in anyway suggest that parents know, or should know everything their children do, or everything that is done to them, nor have I in any way, shape or form hinted, suggested or discussed âperfect discretion,â whatever that may be.
What I have said, as an experienced (good enough) parent, is that itâs important that children feel secure to trust their own judgement of what feels wrong and that having made that decision, they also have the capacity to do something about it. At the age of 14 that doing something about it, is likely to involve adults.
As to the horrendous incident that Jackie Fox lived through, and which was witnessed by so many. I was not suggesting that the witnesses could or ought to have done something to stop the rape (maybe they could have, but for understandable reasons they didnât). What I am surprised by is, that according to the article, they didnât do anything about it for years, decades, not until after the death of the perpetrator. They mostly seem to have decided (aside from Fox, who was marginalised and ostracised) to collude in maintaining the perpetratorâs narrative and thus help sustaine his destructive power. Experience (my life experience as a human being) tells me that they had opportunities to change the narrative, even if they couldnât stop the crime, at the time it occured.
My questions relate to this, why did they collude for so long? Surely, when in your 20s, 30s, 40s you are no longer in awe, and in fear of those who impressed and controlled you in your teens. There is a missing link and I am puzzled by it, without passing judgement.
Here you seem to be, once again, judging and criticising another (assuming you are one) parent. A parent, who the minute her child asked for help got on a plane to Japan (in the 70s, when getting on a plane was not yet the same as getting on a bus) and picked up her daughter the next day, it seems, without judgment and without reproach. Eventhough, her daughter had made some pretty stupid decisions, which the mother most likely didnât endorse. That, to me, is pretty good parenting, she probably saved her daughterâs life with her actions. And I only hope, that if and when my children do something really stupid (which they inevitably doâalthough hopefully not to such extent) I will respond as wisely and just be there, without judgement and with care.
The people, who I know, who survived serious drug (heroin) addiction had these kind of parentsâthey were there when needed, without judgement, but with care, picking up their children from what life had thrown at them (be it even their own bad judgement). For a publicly available record of this kind of parenting, and how it saved a life, itâs worth reading James Taylorâs story of how his father picked him up from a NYC drug den and probably saved his life.
Your response, which at once seems to be âtelling me offâ for supposedly being too interfering and controlling, while dissing Foxâs parents for not interfering (in something, which most likely they couldnât interfere) reads full of self-righteous judgement.
The vast majority of us parents, throughout the ages, have tried, and keep trying to do our best, and most of us, most of the time, are good enough. Yes, there are sociopaths and psychopaths, who become parents, and who should be judged and restrained, and whose children should be removed, but they are the exception.
In all other cases the kind of judgmental dismissing of other peopleâs efforts as parents you seem to dish out, only achieves one thing, and that is to make it hard to openly dicuss our decisions our mistakes as parents. At itâs core it inhibits learning.
So, letâs be a bit less judgemental and a bit more curious about each other as parents and as human beings.
If anyone is interested in the labyrinth of uncertainty that is parenting Andrew Solomonâs book Far from the Tree is worth a read.
EDIT: because I make too many spelling mistakes on such tiny screens.
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