Hours ago (Saturday, May 23) a woman in her 20’s was raped in a Washington park in front of hundreds of witnesses, and nobody stepped forward to try and stop it from happening.

Michael van Poppel, founder and editor of BreakingNews on Twitter and BNONews.com reported the incident on his Twitter page as details came in:

Wow….. a woman was raped at a Washington park and hundreds saw it but did nothing?!? @glownz I can’t imagine someone not trying anything, out of hundreds even.. I could never just watch something like that happen @maggieglazer Well, I could never just stand there and watch if someone like that happened… Tried to see if anyone tweeted about the rape, since there were hundreds of people.. but I can’t find anything. RT @nilicule: @mpoppel it’s called the Bystander Effect, http://bit.ly/JFcxh – and it’s absolutely horrible “the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely it is that any one of them will help.”

For more info on the ‘Bystander Effect’ read the info at the link highlighted above. You think you’re safer with a crowd of people around? Think again.

Continuing on with the twitter stream…

Strange.. I’d feel safer if there are a lot of people since I would expect they’d do something if it went wrong.. vs. being alone Rapist in Washington was in his 60s and the victim was a young female in her 20s Photo of the rapist, creepy guy: http://bit.ly/hX5zz Thinking about the rape story. The KHQ reporter said the initial call was a couple doing X-rated stuff.. So, maybe it didn’t appear as a rape? I mean, I would imagine she would try to resist and call for help but.. maybe it was from a distance @glownz I guess its possible if people witnessed it from a distance. @ChristopherKHQ Do you know what happened? Were the witnesses close or far away? @glownz I know.. but maybe they couldn’t see her face? I mean.. you don’t know what their view was of the entire incident.. @paige661 I know but maybe people were a distance away and that it appeared like a couple having sex and not as in a rape.. KHQ-TV says the initial call was that two people were having sex behind some bushes near a bridge When security responded, the male was uncooperative and combative and he fought with PD when they responded Only after talking to the witnesses and the female.. they did not believe it was consensual.. hmmm @chiefpopeye1979 He was a panhandler. Looks like he didn’t have anything to loose.

(Note: the above stream from twitter was edited to place comments in chronological order for clarity.)

Chilling.

Michael is a journalist who monitors hundreds of news sources daily and sees incredibly disturbing things on a daily basis, and even he is shocked by the fact that a rape can take place in front of so many people, yet no-one would actually help the victim.

I’m speechless.