Herald and Review from Decatur, Illinois • Page 12

Page A12 Opinion. Decatur, Illinois, Wednesday, March 14, 1984 fyrzituir Mtiiim s.emmmer!.m i iiui i uu.uu hi. iujfi jii iwwwi lemoiwwMgjBgi Sanders Hook 1 TT Publisher 1" Thomas L. Blount fl Editor; I i Richard D. Brautigam Managing Editor CENTRAL Richard H.

Icen ILLINOIS 1 Opinion Page Editor Opinions are expressions of the Editorial Board. How-would we have acted? By MAUREEN DOWD New York Times News Service NEW YORK When Catherine Genovese's cry in the night went unanswered by 38 of her neighbors, experts in human behavior were as hard put as anyone else to explain the inaction of the witnesses to her savage murder. "Non-rational behavior," one sociologist called it. But, in the two decades since, a whole body of work has been done on the "Genovese syndrome." The experts have struggled to figure out why so many people listened or watched but failed to call the police that night of March 13, 1964, as the 28-year-old bar manager was stalked and stabbed in her Queens neighborhood. Even as her name became a symbol of public case captured the public imagination and galvanized action in psychological, sociological and legal circles.

This past weekend, 20 years after the slaying, experts from those fields and government officials gathered at Fordham University for a three-day Catherine Genovese Memorial Conference on Bad Samaritanism, to share what they have learned. The university sponsored the conference with the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Institute of Justice and the Center for Responsive Psychology. "It's held the imagination because lookingat those 38 people, we were really looking at ourselves," said Peter J. O'Connor, a Fordham law professor. "We might not have done anything either.

That's the ugly side of human nature." R. Lance Shotland, an associate professor of psychology at Pennsylvania State University, said that over the last 20 years, more than 1,000 articles and books attempting to explain the behavior of bystanders in crises had been written. Only 50 such studies, he said, have been done on the Holocaust. "Probably no single incident has caused social psychologists to pay as much attention to an aspect of social behavior as Kitty Genovese's murder," Dr. Shotland said.

The case had such a remarkable impact for many reasons, the experts say. It occurred, they say, in a more innocent era, before the cynicism of Vietnam and Watergate and before the national crime statistics began to mushroom. To those in the nation's small towns, it seemed to sum up the worst of big cities. "New York is not just a city, it is the focus of the anti-urban sentiment that exists in our society," said Stanley Milgram, a professor of psychology at the City University of New York. But New Yorkers were traumatized as well.

It crystallized what people were only beginning to feel about urban life in America: the anonymity, the lack of human contact, the feeling of not being able to control one's environment. "The case touched on a fundamental issue of the human condition, our primordial nightmare," Dr. Milgram said. "If we need help, will those around us stand around and let us be destroyed or will they come to our aid? Are those other creatures out there to help us sustain our life and values or are we individual flecks of dust just floating around in a vacuum?" Morton Bard, professor of psychology at the City University's Graduate Center, and others agreed that the Genovese case focused attention on the needs of the victim. "It occurred at the very beginning of what has turned out to be the longest and most sustained crime wave in this country's history," Bard said.

Crime has gone up 300 percent in the last 20 years, according to Justice Department officials attending the conference. "It mobilized people's thinking around the need for society to respond to the victimization of people," Bard said. "The victim had become a person without a voice in criminal proceed In the years since, neighborhood watch committees and private security patrols have become common. Many places now have a central 911 emergency telephone number. Many states have passed "Good Samaritan" laws that relieve a person of liability when he helps in emergencies.

Thirty-seven states now have victim compensation laws, three have duty-to-intervene statutes. Lobbying groups have sprung up to protect the rights of the victim, and crime-stoppers units with payment for anonymous tips are common in big city police departments. Legally, doing nothing is not a crime in most states. O'Connor said the New York Legislature should pass two laws making it both a criminal and a civil offense for a bystander to fail to come to the aid of a victim of a crime. He conceded the difficulties of enforcing such a law but said, "At least it would be a moral statement on the part of New York." James K.

Stewart, the director of the National Institute of Justice, the research arm of the Justice Department, says he thinks we are beginning to come out the "era of apathy" that began with the Genovese case. For years, he said, the public had a "Great Society" attitude that professionals law-enforcement, medical, political would take care of everything. "It was an age of dropping out and withdrawing," he said. "People felt they couldn't make a difference. The emphasis was on retreating behind our locks and bars and windows." "Now," he said, "they're realizing their own competence once again.

We are realizing that we are accountable for our own lives and our neighbors' lives." small child in public? Or, when a couple is arguing, even violently, on a public street? Other learned behavior comes into play. We have been "schooled" that it is dangerous to pick up hitchhikers or stop along the interstate. We have been "schooled" that "family squabbles" are private no one else's business. And, to a degree, this is true. The problem lies in the conflict between what we've learned on one', hand and what we've learned on the other.

I Most of us think that if someone was in serious trouble we would react to help them. But, would we have enough information to decide whether this was a situation calling for a Good Samaritan or one in which we had no business? Laws requiring bystanders to assist seem pointless really. Most people think they would do the right thing in such circumstances. It is only when we don't understand the circumstances that we fail. Most of us would call in to police the obvious an armed robbery, a hit-and-run accident, an obvious prowler.

But, other crimes are not so obvious. What if the prowler is a neighbor who has accidentally locked himself out? Would we risk the making a fool of ourselves or our neighbor by calling police? We should, of course, but would we? Often, it is easier just not to get involved. IT IS EASY to assess blame in a case like Kitty Genovese's murder. Knowing what to do at the time is much harder. TWENTY YEARS ago, Kitty Genovese was murdered on a New York streetwhile other residents watched and listened.

They didn't want toget involved. The case hit the headlines worldwide an "oddity," reflecting editors astonishment that people could react so callously. It also sparked dozens of behavioral studies and essays attempting to explain or account for such human attitudes. Conventional wisdom decided that such indifference to human life resulted from the urban environment, the insularity population density creates as we attempt to isolate and protect ourselves in crowded conditions. Conventional wisdom said the Genovese syndrome was something new.

But waS it really? Look at the Western -movie. When gunfighters square off-on. the streets of Dodge City, everyone else runs for cover. the way it was. T'some degree, failure to get involved in cases like that of Kitty Genovese's murder indicates little moFe'-than the primordial urge torsurjvive.

Artieles.bn the right side of this page illuminate other'factors. All three areworth reading. We do not discountthe effects on the individual '-bTgroup behavior, or other phenomena researchers have discoveredrr: Most of us feel we wouldn't act the way Kitty Genovese's neighbors did March 13, 1964. But, how many times have we passed the stranded motorist on an interstate? How" often do we interfere when a parent is "disciplining" a 1 Does judge rate dunce cap? a ENGLISH TEACHERS in ipton, Iowa, are a pretty sensi-Ive lot. Most were furious when a judge iered a high school freshman ar-ted on charges of illegal posses- i of alcohol to write the follow- sentence 750 time: will not Dossess beer again A infamous for apathy eighborhood I am of legal age." there something wrong with ntence? Other than lacking a of style and grace, the sen-is grammatically correct, other hand, Magistrate Freese may wish he been inclusive.

can; hear it now: In three or earsr.a clever lawyer repre- ig the same youngster found That's what it supposed to be. I used to fine them $25 and tell them to be nice kids. It didn't work. I thought that maybe by doing something like this, it would make them stop and think the next time." WELL, OUR guess is the judge is, probably wrong. On balance, though, our nod goes to him in this dispute.

First, repeating the same sentence 750 times isn't really writing. Second, Ms. Weasmer-Haynes's notion of writing as "an enjoyable and positive experience" is questionable at best. How positive can one feel about a term paper boring topic due in the morning? In this and other cases, the secret is perseverehce. It has to be done for no other reason than that a deadline must be met.

To the late Red Smith, writing was like opening a vein. He might have welcomed Judge Freese's exercise, rewriting it, perhaps, 750 times, making it a better sentence. We agree, in part, with Ms. Weasmer-Haynes that a positive outlook is valuable for both teacher and student. Yet, too much sugar coating can erode the sense of discipline needed to write really well.

We'll make one more observation. On balance, Tipton must be a pretty nice place to live if the people there have no more to quarrel about than writing. washed most of it away," he said Saturday, sitting on a stool behind his antique cash register. Titowsky and many other longtime residents remain sensitive about the case and say the residents were unfairly portrayed as callous. "No one wants to give the people that lived here any credit," he said.

"They just want to use it as a sociology lesson." Most of the witnesses have moved away, or died. One who remembers is an 83-year-old woman, who lived next door to Miss Genovese. She was awakened at 3:30 a.m. that night when a friend called to say he had seen the attack but was intoxicated and did not want to deal with the police. She put on a coat over her nightgown and went down the street to find a door ajar and Miss Genovese crumpled behind it.

"She was dying," the woman recalled. "She was making noises like, 'Uh, uh, like she couldn't breathe." The woman then went to a neighbor, who called the police. The woman said she wished people would forget. "We weren't apathetic," she said. "There are good people here.

There's so much else bad in the world. Poor Kittv." sentence in Green Haven state prison, and was recently denied parole. Moseley first attacked Miss Genovese in front of the Austin Book Shop. "Oh, my God, he stabbed me," she screamed into the early-morning stillness. "Please help me!" Windows opened and lights went on in the building across the street.

"Let that girl alone," yelled a man on the seventh floor. Moseley walked toward his car. As he later told the police, "I had a feeling this man would close his window and go back to sleep and then I would return." Miss Genovese staggered around the corner and fell into the first unlocked building she could find. As witnesses watched from behind their curtains one couple pulled up chairs to the window and turned out the light to see better Moseley came back and calmly poked into doors until he found his victim. He stabbed her eight more times and sexually molested her.

It. was 3:50 a.m. when the police received their first call from a man who said he did not want to "get involved." Bernard Titowsky, owner of the Austin Book Shop, recalls coming in the next morning and finding blood near the door. "Time and rain New York Times News Service NEW YORK It flashes through Margaret Swinchoski's mind each time she walks past the Kew Gardens train station: This was where Kitty Genovese met her killer. Even in the small town in Vermont-where Miss Swinchoski grew up, Catherine Genovese's case became a shocking symbol of apathy.

Now Miss Swinchoski lives in the same quiet, middle-class Queens neighborhood where Miss Genovese was slain 20 years ago as she went from her car, parked in the station lot, to her apartment on Austin Street. For more than half an hour that night, Miss Genovese's killer stalked and stabbed her, again and again, as 38 of her neighbors silently turned away from her cries. "I walk here during the day but not at night," said Miss Swinchoski, a 25-year-old flutist, "because of what happened then and because of what might happen now." The killer, Winston Moseley, followed Miss Genovese into the parking lot at 3:20 a.m. on March 13, 1964. Moseley, 29, a machine operator and family man, was convicted after he confessed that he had been cruising around, planning "to rape and to rob and to kill a girl." He is serving a life ssession of wine or whisky, the.

judge, honor, itateinent just says beer." teachers aren't bother-y. grammatical error. What donTlike is the use of writing punfstenent. "We try to encour-e writing," said Jerie Weasmer-aynesi? head of the English de- artment at Tipton High School. We trs so make it an enjoyaoie nd positive experience for the students and this guy makes it a form of legal punishment When you think of it from the point of view 6Ta writing teacher, it's an abomination.

This is verifying for everyone (that) writing is a form of punishment." Judge Freese is equally know it's punishment. arrpom rape shows parallels Ellen 'j VOTE I Goodman Commentary- There are already many such "duty to rescue" laws in countries like France, West Germany and the Soviet Union. But only three states (Vermont, Rhode Island and Minnesota) have adopted a model bystander law that explicitly states a citizen's "duty to rescue" a victim under certain conditions when, for example, the bystander is not in danger himself. Perhaps we have become more sensitive to victims or simply more conscious of the social effect of apathy in the face of a criminal. As Dr.

R. Lance Shotland, a researcher at Penn State University, says, the Bad Samaritan gives a message to the criminal "to go ahead, that it's easy." Shotland says, "There's a delicate balance between social control and criminal behavior. Only as people get involved do we preserve social control." Any "duty-to-help" law is largely symbolic. There is no sure way to compel one person to help another. But widespread adoption of the law would show public support for the ethical instincts to help, the belief that people have responsibility to each other.

It would be, finally, a statement that was missing the night of Kitty Genovese's death: We want to get the assailant. This is especially true if the crime being witnessed is, as alleged in both these cases, a rape or attempted rape. But the irony is that Bad Samaritans are not comfortable with their apathy. In many crimes, says Dr. Charles Korte, a psychologist at North Carolina State who has done some of this research, "they are not just callously viewing the situation.

I'm quite sure that bystanders are going through tremendous internal conflict, but they can't bring themselves to do anything." We can't prove that there are fewer cases of bystander apathy today than 20 years ago. But we do know that the public acceptance of "not getting involved" has practically disappeared. Indeed, most of us have come to favor a law that would require bystanders to help. Dr. Harold Takooshian, who has organized a Kitty Genovese memorial conference at Fordham University on March 10, says that after the Genovese murder, 75 percent of those polled still thought that intervention should be left to one's own conscience.

But by the time he repeated the survey last year after the New Bedford case, 85 percent agreed that a person should be required to help, or at least phone the police, or face a fine or jail sentence. BOSTON It is just 20 years since Kitty Genovese became one of the few victims of crime we remember by name. On March 13, 1964, this young woman was stabbed repeatedly near her Queens, N.Y., home. That night, 38 people heard her screams for help, but not one called the police until she was dead. The chilling anniversary of her death occurs just as the New Bedford rape case has come to trial.

There, a woman has testified that she was held down on a pool table in a bar named Big Dan's and raped while others watched and cheered. Both of these ases in their own time have touched a sensitive pub-lie nerve, about callousness as well as crime. The classic line from the Kitty Genovese case was from a witness: "I didn't want to get involved." The memorable line in the alleged barroom rape was. the reported cheer: "Go for it." In neither instance were all the bystanders as uncaring as we may have believed at first. The attacks on Kitty Genovese were stopped twice by yells from windows.

At least one of the men in Big Dan's, the bartender, says that he tried to contact the police when he sensed trouble. But what rivets public attention to these and dozens of similar tales of violence are the crimes of omis- sion Bad Samaritanism, if you will. We are profoundly disturbed by the idea that one human being can watch another being hurt without helping. It makes us all feel more vulnerable, isolated, alone. In the years since Kitty Genovese's murder, social scientists have learned a great deal about bystander behavior.

They've learned that the willingness to intervene depends on a number of subtle factors beyond fear. It turns out that people are less likely to help if they are in a crowd of bystanders than if they are the only one. Their sense of responsibi-litly is diffused. If the others aren't helping, they begin to reinterpret what they are seeing. People are also more passive in urban neighborhoods or crowded city spots where they suffer from "excessive overload" and simply turn off.

They rarely get involved if they believe that the victim knows 1984 The Orlando Sentinel Field Newspaper Syndicate "LOOK OM THE BE- CbMlM6 OBSCURE EtfCOGtt TO BE VVCE-.