Anatomy of a Swarming (The Epilogue) (from "My Short Stories (Book One)") - by Anne Shier (a.k.a. "Annie")

(Based on an article in the Toronto Sun, July 2009)

The evening had started out innocently enough.  The young woman, Ellen, and her boyfriend, Dan, were attending a fund raising event in Belleville, had a lovely dinner there, and then decided to go to a bar to round out the rest of the evening.  They were soon joined there by another group of young people.  After a while, the other group wanted to “check out” another bar nearby.  So, Ellen and 2 other girls went over to the other bar to investigate and on their way back, the terrible assault on Ellen occurred, perpetrated by a gang of teenagers. 

At first, the 3 girls were taunted by the gang as being “sluts”, but because Ellen was the smallest of the 3 girls, she was the one who seemed to be targeted for assault.  But, later, as one of her assailants would say, “If it wasn’t her, it would have been the next person”.  This showed that the gang was not interested in whom they assaulted, but in when and where their planned assault would take place.  The fact that she was a small and vulnerable young woman was not the “reason” for the attack.  Ellen was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. What the gang wanted to do was a purely random thing, purely for the thrill of hurting someone innocent – a “thrill” crime.

Later on, it would turn out that the perpetrators (“perps”) were all young offenders, including the 2 primary female attackers, so they all came under the auspices of the Youth Criminal Justice Act, which protects offenders under the age of 18.

Even though Ellen, her friends, and 2 others went to the police station right after the attack, they were told by the female desk sergeant on duty that night to “get the f*** out of here”, and to come back when they were “sober”.  No effort whatsoever was made by the police to take a report on what had occurred to Ellen, or to get Ellen to the hospital that night.  Police showed no reaction to the attack or sympathy for the victim, and no denial by police was ever recorded.  Was it possible that the Belleville police were confused about who Ellen really was?  Was she a true victim to them, or just another drunk teenager looking for trouble on a Saturday night?  It must have been simpler for police to just lump together all teenagers into one big “troublemaker” group, rather than to try to differentiate between a victim and her attackers. 

So, it wasn’t actually until about 4 days later that a vaguely written general occurrence report came from police.  But, the report was written by a police officer who had had no first-hand knowledge of the incident and who claimed in the report that the police did not respond to the two 911 calls because they thought it was just another common bar fight.   To them, no “serious” injuries were deemed to have occurred and everyone involved had been drinking.

However, 5 witnesses had shown up at the police station that night – Ellen, her boyfriend Dan, the young woman who had called 911 twice, another male friend, and finally, a youth who had been involved in the attack on Ellen and who had taken a video of it.  The youth with the video, briefly repentant, had helped Ellen to her feet after the attack and had decided to tell her the names of the 2 girls who had been her main attackers.  However, when the police later “blew them off”, ignoring them, the youth then left, taking his video with him.  It seemed that he no longer wished to help Ellen, possibly due to a fear of being targeted himself. 

The next morning, Ellen arrived back at the police station, ready to give her formal statement.  By now, she was in severe pain, her jaw swollen to the point of preventing her from talking properly, or even opening her mouth.  During the entire interview, the police still treated her as if she had been drunk the night before (which she had not) and insisted on referring to the event as the “alleged” assault, even though the severity of her injuries was obvious to everyone.  Ellen gave the officer taking her statement the names of the youth with the video and the 2 primary female assailants.  But, since the youth now no longer wished to be involved, he had conveniently disappeared, along with his video.  However, eventually, the police found him and confiscated the needed video for evidence.

Up to that moment, the police, in general, had remained sceptical of the actual facts of the assault, but when the officer saw the contents of the video, he changed his tune immediately and called the attack on Ellen both “brutal and obviously unprovoked”.  The question was - why did it take so long for the police to clue in to the assault?  The officer excused his matter-of-fact attitude (and that of the entire police department) by referring to Ellen’s friends that had come to the station that night as her “posse”.  He asked, “What was he expected to do?”  This statement turned out to be a big mistake on the part of the officer. 

The reporter, who wrote this article initially, was absolutely dumbfounded by the officer’s allusion to a “posse”.  He asked the officer who exactly was considered to be a member of Ellen’s “posse”?  Her boyfriend, Dan, who was a university graduate and an upstanding citizen?  The female witness who called 911 twice looking for help?  Or, the other male friend who happened to be a police cadet at the time and intended to become an OPP officer in the near future?   To the reporter’s questions, this police officer had no answer.


Eventually, the two 15-year-old girls who had attacked Ellen with no provocation whatsoever were arrested by the Belleville police and charged with “assault causing bodily harm”.  They were ordered not to communicate in any way with each other during the pre-trial period while they were out on bail.  However, in an act of pure defiance, one of the girls sent a “text” message to the other girl, joking online about their vicious attack on a completely innocent young woman.  Her bail was revoked as a result, and the second girl’s mother then also turned in her daughter to the police.  This is how young offenders view our youth criminal justice system.  They laugh at it, make fun of it, defy it and, in the end, unless the police take what they do seriously enough, maybe even get away with their crimes.  Their victims have to suffer greatly and endlessly, while these young offenders just thumb their noses at a legal system that merely coddles them, rather than trying to protect the public from these developing predators.

published by Authorhouse, copyright 2011, Anne Shier.  All rights reserved.