The Stigma of Being a Snitch

While I was in college, I knew a woman who, while walking home one night, was assaulted outside an apartment building. She escaped from her attacker and ran into the locked entry. She began pushing door buttons screaming for help. Yelling that she was being raped. No one came to help her. No one even called the police.

In 1984, a woman in New Bedfored, MA was gang-raped for two hours on a pool table in a bar and no one did anything to stop it. This scene was repeated recently when a 15-year-old girl was gang-raped outside her high school, with upwards of 20 people looking on. Some taking videos on their cell phones. None of them calling the police until after the assault was over.

This is such a sad commentary on our society, and yet I believe it can be traced back to our children's early years. I think it all comes down to four simple words: "Stop being a tattletale!"

As a parent of two boys, I was determined that my kids would not be the kind of young men who  would stand around and watch someone being assaulted. I taught them that if someone was hurting them or anyone else that they were to tell an adult who could take care of the situation. And I encouraged that in my own home as well. If one of the boys was being mean to the other, I encouraged them to tell me because there's no excuse for being mean to each other. I never once admonished my kids to not be a tattletale.

As they grew older, I taught them to talk out their problems and always to walk away from a confrontation, but reminded them that if there was something they couldn't handle, they needed to find the nearest adult and get help. When we moved back to Pennsylvania from Colorado so that my kids could grow up around their extended family, I encountered some unforeseen problems. At family gatherings, my kids did what they normally did: they came and found an adult if there was a situation they couldn't handle.  Unfortunately, unless they found me first, their aunts/uncles would usually tell them, "Stop being a tattletale" and tell the kids to work it out for themselves. I'm all for teaching kids how to work things out by themselves, and I did that with my kids. But with my nieces and nephews, the way to work things out was that the strongest won. Always. And that's not always the fair solution.

I tried to explain to my siblings the damage done by saying, "Stop being a tattletale", but they all laughed at me. I tried to explain why it was better to walk away from a fight and find some way to defuse the situation, but they all told me that sometimes you just have to fight. I agree that sometimes you have to defend yourself, but that doesn't necessarily translate into getting involved in a fight. Both my boys went through the stage of puberty and early adulthood where they were always gonna kick some guy's ass for looking at their girlfriend wrong or saying something nasty about them, but in the end, they both fell back to what they were taught.

Two incidents spring to mind.

My oldest son was on the school bus where he had daily been being tormented by some of the older boys because his mother was gay. One day they told him, "You're gonna grow up to be just like your mother!" And my son's response was, "I know! We both like women!" His ability to make a joke out of the situation brought the teasing and tormenting to an end.

My youngest son was on a bus when he saw some other young men tormenting a mentally challenged individual. My son told them to back off and leave him alone and they did. He stood up for someone who was being picked on by others and made them stop.

Both those incidents make me so proud of my kids. They may be tattletales in the eyes of most other people, but at least I know that no young woman will suffer the horror of a gang rape if my boys are around. I'd rather they be tattletales than cowards who are too afraid to stand up and protect the helpless.