40 people do nothing but watch 15-yr-old's gangrape, live on Facebook: Welcome to 2017
40 people saw five to six men gangraping a 15-year-old Chicago girl live on Facebook and did nothing about it.
Chicago Police are hunting for 'five to six' men who allegedly gangraped a 15-year-old girl and streamed the assault live on Facebook.
What's more horrifying than live stream of abuse is the fact that 40 people watched this video and did nothing to help the girl - not even a call to the authorities.
The incident came to police's attention on Monday night, when the girl's mother approached the head of Chicago Police. She informed the officer that her daughter had been missing since Sunday and showed him screen grabs from the video of the assault. Eventually, the young girl was rescued by police on Tuesday evening.
Now, as investigations in the case continue, two terrifying truths face us: one, that many people today condone and even enjoy voyeurism of violence and two, that it is getting harder for authorities and institutions themselves to safeguard social media from such content.
Voyeurism of violence
While for many of us, the immediate response to such videos would be not to watch but report it to the police, there are some who enjoy watching violence. Delhi-based clinical psychologist Sujatha Sharma attributes these habits to a rise in global levels of frustration and a general normalisation of violence.
"Committing an act of rape (and other such violent aggression) is mostly an outlet for people who are frustrated -- aggression is a natural response to frustration. It is also a method to establish control. Same instincts can be seen in a person who enjoys watching violence. It's just that these voyeurs either lack the courage or opportunity to commit the same acts," says Sharma.
Last year, Al Jazeera reported on the market for rape videos in Uttar Pradesh. One of the men they interviewed readily admitted to watching rape videos frequently. He said watching the videos gave him "peace of mind".
"As a society we are increasingly getting desensitised towards all acts of aggression. Violence is streamed into drawing rooms through televisions and pervades all other areas of life. People are not empathetic to anyone's pain anymore," she says.
"For those who who commit or watch such violence, these victims are not human anymore -- they're mere objects," she says.
Another factor according to Dr Sharma, is that with this normalisation, many start living in a delusional fantasy that they can get away with such acts of violent aggression and that what they're really doing is entertaining their audience.
Facebook's struggle with voyeurism of violence
Believe it or not, this has happened before. Mere 22 days after we stepped into the new year, a Facebook Live video of a Swedish woman being gangraped was broadcast for almost three hours.
The rapists in the video laughed as they threatened and mocked the woman, and some viewers laughed with them. "You have been raped," said one of the rapists, laughing, towards the end of the broadcast. "Three against one, ha ha ha," commented one of the members of the closed group.
The men then went live again, this time with the victim in front of the camera, denying that she had been raped. Her rapists laughed and the broadcast continued until the police arrived in the flat and turned the camera off. Three men were arrested.
Facebook's love for videos, especially live videos, has proven to be a moolah-maker for the social media giant. At the same time, it has opened a Pandora's box of controversies.
In January, three teenagers -- one of them holding a gun -- threatened to shoot and assault school administrators while live-streaming their threat.
The same month, four men and women from Chicago were arrested after they broadcast a video assaulting and torturing a bound and gagged schizophrenic on Facebook Live.
Not just Facebook's problem
If you think the problem of voyeurism of violence exists only on Facebook, you're sadly mistaken.
At the fag end of February, a 16-year-old girl in Meerut, Uttar Pradesh was gangraped by three men who filmed the assault and then circulated the video on Whatsapp, sharing it with people from the village. Police only came to know about the incident three days later, when the girl's father received the clip on WhatsApp and went to the authorities.
Last January, a 40-year-old health worker in Muzaffarnagar killed herself after a video of her being raped was circulated on WhatsApp. In fact, Uttar Pradesh is a hub of such videos. The rapes, recorded on phone to blackmail victims, are passed around and sold as "WhatsApp sex videos" for Rs 20 to Rs 200.
Other live platforms aren't spared either.
Almost a year ago, an Ohio woman was prosecuted for live-streaming a 29-year-old man raping her 17-year-old friend on Twitter's video app Periscope. Her prosecutors said she had "hoped that live-streaming the attack would help stop it," but was charmed by the positive feedback she received instead.
Back in 2014, in Massachusetts, a man and woman raped a 16-year-old and got a teenager friend to record the assault and post it to Snapchat. Police later found the girl in the woods, alone and under the influence of drugs.
Who's accountable anyway?
Considering the rapists are also filmed in the video, catching them is relatively easy. What's difficult is to trace such videos and the location of their victims. While in the Sweden case, several viewers 'reported' the video, it is unclear whether anyone reported the live-stream of the Chicago gangrape.
Moreover, nothing can be done to counter those who watch and 'enjoy' these horrific videos as it isn't illegal to watch them or to not report it to the police. Even if US authorities find out the number of viewers, they would have to "prove a nexus to criminal activity" and subpoena Facebook to find out their identities.
A Facebook spokesperson, who declined to comment on the Chicago incident, told AP that "the company takes its responsibility to keep people safe on Facebook very seriously." "Crimes like this are hideous and we do not allow that kind of content on Facebook," she said.
Facebook maintains that "it reviews questionable content around the clock that is reported by users and has systems in place to ensure that time sensitive content is dealt with quickly". In the case of the Chicago gangrape, Facebook took down the video only after the police asked it to.
In India, meanwhile, lawmakers can find their way around to prosecuting those who transmit and distribute rape videos. There's no law against watching, however.