An 18-year-old girl was drinking beer with his father in a Brooklyn playground when five teen boys chased the father out of the scene with a gun. The teen girl was then raped by the boys as the father tried to ask for help outside the playground.
Daily Mail reports that the five suspects are already in police custody with two of them turned in by their own parents. The names of the boys are Denzel Murray, 14; Shaquell Cooper and Ethan Phillip, both 15; Onandi Brown and Travis Beckford, both 17.
Four suspects -- Murray, Cooper, Phillip and Brown -- have already been charged each with a single count of rape and sex abuse and two counts of participating in a criminal sex act. Beckford was the last one to be taken into custody and is still awaiting for the corresponding charges.
In an interview with WABC, the father says that the reason he was not able to call the police earlier was because he did not have a cellphone with him. He tried to beg for help at a nearby store but no one called the police.
Alan Lipman, director of the Center for the Study of Violence in Washington, D.C., talked to Yahoo Parenting about the effects of this event on the parent of the victim. "If you're a father in this situation, you are going through rage and guilt and trauma of having been there, and then a sense of rage and humiliation."
"That's a trauma in and of itself, seeing your daughter about to be brutalized. Then there's the issue of how he deals with his daughter going forward, how he will face her," says Lipman.
The director also talked to Yahoo Parenting about the parents who turned their kids into police custody for the teen girl's rape in a Brooklyn playground. "On one hand, there's a kind of mortification upon discovering their child's behavior -- but it's also their child. There's likely also the recognition that if they don't turn him in, the consequences may be greater."
