A police narrative of people watching a man rape a woman was ‘not true’, but it still ran wild in the press – similar to a 1964 murder that prompted the ‘bystander effect’
The news was horrifying, a parable of inhumanity so grim that it was destined to go viral.
Two weeks ago, police said that passengers on Philadelphia’s elevated train watched a man rape a woman and did not intervene – and that some riders might have even recorded the 13 October attack with their cellphones. These onlookers did not call for help during the attack. The only person who dialed 911 was an off-duty transit worker, police alleged.