i look both ways before crossing the street, lock my doors at night, wear a helmet when riding my bike and a seat belt too when i'm in the car... there are just some precautions you have to accept in this world now adays and one of them is not going off alone in cars with strangers when you are a teenage girl in or out of the country.
we drilled into all three girls to NEVER leave you friend behind, and to NEVER let them go alone without you unless you know it's wrong and can't stop them... then either call or come home
i hitched close to 10,000 miles in the 70's and if i'd of got killed it would of been my own damn fault.
what is it they always say about the serial killer next door??? "But he was such a nice looking boy..."
"I think it's because your comment is based on hindsight. I look at the pictures of the accused don't see anything that would indicate that those boys were dangerous. Heck, we still don't know if they're dangerous. I've accepted plenty of rides from people I didn't know or didn't know well. Heck, some of 'em were foriegners! Yet here I am, amost 39 and none the worse for wear. There are horrible people everywhere. But to assume that everyone you meet intends to do you harm is a helluva miserable way to go through life."
But, you can't tell danger from someone's looks, necessarily. Girls, and women, should never, never get in a car with people they do not know, period, unless the circumstances make taking such a chance absolutely necessary to escape some other, imminent danger. Once you are in a car with a stranger, worse, several strangers, you are largely in his, or their, control.
I am 54, soon to be 55, and I have never gotten into a car with a strange man and never would. Somehow I managed to live this long without doing that. Those who say they have done so and have escaped harm still took a chance they should never have taken. I simply cannot imagine anyone questionning that rule, yet many on this board are. No one is blaming the girl for doing this, but it is like playing Russian roulette. Prostitutes are frequent crime victims, often suffering dreadful torture and/or death mostly because their job description calls for getting into cars with strange men.
To the poster who suggests that we who urge commensense self-protection believe we are somehow "perfect," it is you who are being self-righteous. I am simply a Christian and a sinner, far less than perfect, as I am sure you know, anyway, but I walked away from several potentially dangerous situations when I was a teenager, and it was not from being perfect, it was from simple self-preservation.
I am terribly sorry for this poor girl and her family. I have two daughters, myself. The perpetrators, alone, are to blame, certainly. But getting into a car with strangers, especially multiple male strangers is playing with fire (This assumes the young lady did this voluntarily which of course we do not know, for certain, but it seems from some eyewitnesses that she did). Many kids who play with matches never manage to burn down the house, either, but it's still a lousy idea, and we still try to keep them from doing it.