Instead of helping or contacting authorities, bystanders are recording victims’ brutal beatings or deaths. Many of our young people have been assaulted or stabbed, and their classmates have been known to watch and record the horrific events, doing nothing.
For an excessive number of parents in our nation, this is the harsh truth in this era of social media. Sometimes, video footage of a murder scene has been widely shared online before the police have positively identified the victims and tracked down their parents.
Parents also fear that one day, they will receive a text message from one of their children- the type where they are in peril. That is what happened to Gail Maddox on February 25. The Birmingham, Alabama, mother received a text from her daughter Mahogany Jackson, 20, saying she was being held hostage.
The pain that Gail experienced did not end there. The following day, authorities discovered Mahogany’s dead body.
However, the tragedy was intensified by the appearance and subsequent circulation of recordings documenting Mahogany’s rape, torture, and murder. The horrific crimes committed by her captors and murders were documented for everyone to see.
The loss of her kid was something no parent should ever have to go through. However, it intensifies with every video post. She relives the unimaginable agony brought on by this brutality because it has been made public online.
The mother has a message to both the video makers, the uploaders, and also the viewers – you are complicit in a crime if you watch footage of torture or murder broadcast online and casually share it, regardless of whether the person posting it is the perpetrator, an accomplice, or a spectator.
She added that when the owners of platforms that host the videos do nothing to remove them from the site, they are complicit as well. Maddox believes the proactive regulation and eradication of recorded violence should be a priority for social media networks.
Maddox, the now-activist, said the pain that she and other moms endure, as well as the critical need to end the violence that is dividing our communities, has been a constant theme in her speeches.
She urged all to speak out for what’s right during National Crime Victims’ Rights Week, and together, people can break the vicious cycle of violence and trauma, and everyone has a part to play.
