15-year-old gets raped as 10+ bystanders look on

Investigators say as many as 20 people were involved in or stood and watched the gang rape of a 15-year-old girl outside a California high school homecoming dance Saturday night. Authorities describe it as a 2½-hour assault on the Richmond High School campus in suburban San Francisco. – source (CNN)

I’m genuinely speechless at the shit that goes on in high school these days. I say "these days" because this stuff was unheard of even 10 years ago when I was entering high school. I know this is not at every high school, but I’ve read more than my fair share of high school sexual (and aggravated) assaults recently. Maybe sexual assaults is to the 2000s as school shootings were to the 1990s?

But what causes this stuff to happen now? I present to you my rickety train of thought without any real direction, filled with more questions than it answers.

Is it because teenagers today are sexually stimulated by the media? Is it access to porn on the Internet? Is it because they don’t treat women with respect because I think that women are treated better than they were 20 years ago (or at least treated more like equals)?

Is it because of the underage drinking laws that make teens have to hide in alleyways to get drunk? Is it because they’re given too many shiny toys to make them the targets of theft? Are they wearing enough to ward off these hyper-sexualized males? Should that even matter? (No.)

And why didn’t this happen 10+ years ago? One of my theories is that school communities were more tight-knit and the rules were generally more relaxed. I think freshman hazing has a lot to do with school unity – nothing like picking on a smaller, weaker group of people to build unity, eh? But since the seniors knew the freshmen, maybe there was a sense of camaraderie? Or maybe because a tap on the ass of the girl you were passing in the hall would trigger a slap back and a giggle instead of a detention slip and possible sexual assault charges filed on your permanent record?

Just random thoughts…