This is not a Philadelphia thing. We have lost something as a nation. We’ve lost our…connective tissue. We’ve lost our courage. We’ve lost our humanity, I think.
A 35-year-old man in Pennsylvania is facing rape and assault charges after a woman was sexually assaulted on board a public transit train Wednesday night as riders witnessed the attack but did not intervene, authorities said on Friday.
The woman was assaulted at around 11 p.m. while riding the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority (SEPTA) Market-Frankford line towards the town of Upper Darby.
“The assault was observed by a SEPTA employee, who called 911, enabling SEPTA officers to respond immediately and apprehend the suspect in the act,” Andrew Busch, a SEPTA spokesperson, said in a statement.
SEPTA officers arrested the man, later identified as 35-year-old Fiston Ngoy, according to Upper Darby Police Superintendent Timothy Bernhardt.
Surveillance video captured the entirety of the assault, giving investigators enough evidence to charge Ngoy with rape and assault, Bernhardt told NBC Philadelphia.
The video also shows how riders, who also witnessed the attack, did nothing to help the woman being assaulted, according to Bernhardt.
“It’s disturbing,” he said. “I’m shocked, I have no words for it. I just can’t imagine seeing what you were seeing through your own eyes and seeing what this woman was going through that no one would step in and help her.”
This story frightens me. As a father of four daughters this scares the hell out of me. As a human being, I’m horrified. We’ve lost the notion that some things are worth fighting for. Some things are worth dying for. There is right and wrong.
We’ve lost the sense that others need to be protected sometimes. We owe that to one another. We’ve lost. We’ve lost. We’ve lost. We’ve lost so much and we will continue losing until we can’t remember what it is we’ve lost.
We’ve had so many generations who resisted any and all standards and truths that meaninglessness itself has become a victory. Well, you’ve won. And we have all lost.
October 18, 2021 at 9:11 pm
People have adopted a “none of my business” for a long time. Not only will they not call 911, I wonder how many whipped out their cell phone to video tape it. The other scenario is denying they ever saw anything.
I hope the rape victim gets justice not just against her attacker but also from those who refused to lift a finger to help. If bystanders work together, they can overcome perpetrators.
October 18, 2021 at 9:15 pm
What was the point in history when this sort of thing didn’t happen?
According to the Tuskegee Institute 4,743 people were lynched in the United States in extrajudicial killings. All were public and witnessed by crowds. That equates to about 55 a year where crowds of people witnessed and did nothing to intervene while a person was murdered. This all in the most Christian American South.
And let’s not forget the murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964. Look it up.
Surely the 1960s, 70s, 80s and 90s weren’t better when the rising crime rates, then the crack epidemic, and then Bill Clinton swept the nation.
I am interested to know when it was you think that we had such connective tissue that this sort of thing didn’t happen.
October 19, 2021 at 9:13 am
Evil is always with us. Kitty Genovese was heard by people inside. And that story was shocking to people. Now, people on the train picked up their phones and recorded it and never bothered to call 911.
October 25, 2021 at 3:02 pm
Nah. Read up on that and the police say it didn’t happen. Anyway, even if it did no two incidents will be exactly alike. But I’m sure the lynch mobs of the American South would have been all too happy to document their lynchings on camera if possible. They did take many photos as we know, and this at a time when photos were more difficult to take than pulling out your phone. Shows how much they relished it.
That aside, I’d really like to know what your evidence is that we have lost our humanity in this period in time. There’s no end of examples of human callousness and cruelty in the past, and in fact any systematic study of violence in prior historical periods will make it clear that the past was much more violent.
So again, you can always find shocking news stories, but what do you have in terms of broadly relevant data to show that society is trending in the wrong direction?