Today in class we watched the "Bad Samaritan" documentary. We talked about the issue of being a bystander especially in this case. Jeremy raped this seven year old girl in the women's bathroom and David Cash the bystander just watched. How can someone be so heartless and know that his friend is in a stall with a little seven year old girl. The part that I still don't understand is Cash tried to justify his actions saying how he didn't know and he said "Jeremy is my friend we were in AP English together." Who in there right mind uses "we had a class together" to justify why he didn't he stop his friend from raping a seven year old girl. Now this will forever be on his conscious. Her mother passed a petition and got 20,000 signatures that David Cash should go to jail. Then later David Cash got into Berkeley and was harassed by fellow students everyday for what he did.
The way David Cash speaks about this topic almost seems like he could care less about the matter at hand. He defends his friend by having a class with him?? That really is so heartless.
ReplyDeleteBuilding off of what both of you have said, I think his defense was not that he had a class with him, but more that he was only looking at his own best interest. He was about to attend UC Berkeley for nuclear engineering, and did not want to risk getting caught up with the situation and getting falsely accused for something he did not do. In that moment, Cash did not want all of his hard work that got him into Berkeley to just go out of the window because he tried to break up the assault and get falsely accused if someone else walked in. However, this does not justify his actions as he left and did not alert a security guard or any sort of authority figure. Even worse, when Jeremy told Cash he had murdered the girl, Cash does not tell anybody for up to 3 days. Cash exiting the scene is somewhat justified because he is looking out for his best interest and does not want to get caught up, but he easily could have told authorities quick enough to stop the pending murder in the bathroom. Plus, if he really was a good friend of Jeremy's because they had "AP English" together, then he should have been looking out for his best interest and tried to stop the assault from happening and stop Jeremy from getting himself in a terrible situation. In the end, we all like to believe that we would act as heroes and prevent the seven year old from getting raped and murdered and helping our best friend get help, but like Cash said, you don't know how to react/think until you actually experience it.
ReplyDelete