Excessive media violence or natural selection at work?
 

What next? copycat kids drinking tap water to death?

Several boys die copying Saddam hanging

By ANNA JOHNSON, Associated Press Writer 15 minutes ago

CAIRO, Egypt - The boys' deaths — scattered in the United States, in Yemen, in Turkey and elsewhere in seemingly isolated horror — had one thing in common: They hanged themselves after watching televised images of
Saddam Hussein's execution.
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Officials and relatives say the children appeared to be mimicking the former dictator's Dec. 30 hanging, shown both on a sanitized Iraqi government tape and explicit clandestine videos that popped up on Web sites and some TV channels.

The leaked videos, apparently taken by cell phone cameras, set off international outrage over the raucous scene at Saddam's execution, but some experts are more concerned about the images of the deposed Iraqi leader dropping through the gallows floor and his body swinging at the end of a rope.

The experts say such graphic images can severely affect youngsters who do not yet understand the consequences of death and violence — especially because Saddam's death received intense international attention.

"They see how it's done, but they don't think it's horrific, and they're more likely to imitate it," said Hisham Ramy, an associate professor of psychiatry at Ain Shams University in Cairo.

A day after Saddam's execution, a 10-year-old boy in Texas hanged himself from a bunk bed after watching a news report on the execution. Police in the Houston suburb of Webster said the boy, Sergio Pelico, tied a slipknot around his neck while on the bed but had not mean to kill himself.

"I don't think he thought it was real," Julio Gustavo, Sergio's uncle, said afterward. "They showed them putting the noose around his neck and everything. Why show that on TV?"

Something similar occurred in Turkey, where 12-year-old Alisen Akti hanged himself Wednesday from a bunk bed after watching TV footage. His father, Esat Akti, told a newspaper in the southeastern province of Mus that his son had been affected by the televised images.

"After watching Saddam's execution he was constantly asking 'How was Saddam killed?' and 'Did he suffer?'" Akti was quoted as saying. "These television images are responsible for my son's death."

Nine-year-old Mubassahr Ali, from the eastern Pakistan town of Rahim Yar Khan, died hours after Saddam when he also mimicked the ousted leader's execution, local police official Sultan Ahmed Chaudhry said.

"The ill-fated boy used a long piece of cloth, tied it with a ceiling fan and wrapped its other end around his neck. Then he stood on a chair and fell down," Chaudhry said.

In Yemen, at least two young boys died and another was injured in apparent imitations of Saddam's hanging.

One of the cases involved a 13-year-old junior high school student who hanged himself after watching Saddam's execution on television, a Yemeni security official said.

When the boy's family returned to their home outside the capital, San'a, on Wednesday, they found him hanging from a tree wearing a traditional Arab headdress, said the boy's cousin, Yahya al-Hammadi.

In Saudi Arabia, a 12-year-old boy was found by his brother hanging from an iron door with a rope around his neck, the newspaper Okaz reported. The boy, Sultan Abdullah al-Shemmeri, lived with his family in the province of Hafr al-Baten, near the Iraqi border.

"The child was just 12 years old and didn't really know whether the execution of Saddam was something good or bad," a Saudi Interior Ministry official said Saturday. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press.

Local media in Algeria and India also have reported other mimicking deaths, but these could not immediately be confirmed.

Ramy, the professor in Egypt, said children are prone to imitating violence they encounter on television, the Internet and movies, but usually they act out against another person. Mimicking a hanging or suicide is unusual, but perhaps in this case it is unsurprising, he said.

Because "some people have said Saddam is a hero and martyr and have glorified his death, this has affected children," Ramy said.

But Jasem Hajia, a child psychologist in Kuwait City, cautioned against placing all the blame on video images. "This is extreme, and I think there were physiological disorders as well with the children," Hajia said.

Well, that was disturbing. I do agree that some things should not be shown on public TV. More parents should keep tabs on what their kids see and hear.

what the daily suicide rate in the US ? I'm gonna look this one up.

-John

Lord have mercy, truth is stranger than friction.

Gee, you'd think the 'tards would have known what happened to Saddam after the noose went over his neck.

If they didn't, they found out first hand. No loss anyways. Several people less from an area we don't like and doesn't like us is not actually a loss but a plus. Texas boy, who knows.

If he is to be believed, they are damaged goods. Not that I place much stock in what he says.

lost my edit
 

blah my edit got lost


what I found was this, according to the WHO via Wiki, the US has about 10 suicides per 100,000 people. this time the US population of 298B divided by 365 days per year points to about 83 suicides per day in the US (sounds like a lot)

Ok, so 1/3rd of the population is not capable of committing suicide (babies or other people not physically skilled enough to kill themselves) so make that 40 or 50 suicides a day (still sounds like a lot - what am I missing here ?)

If there are 40 suicides a day in the US, whats the chance that a few of them were hangings, and the person had recently watched the hanging on tv/internet ? What am I missing here ?

-John

A lot more people die of other causes. Why is this 83 you calculated significant?

As far as I can tell, in the origional post they cited 1 case in texas and a few others in other countries of "Several boys die copying Saddam hanging".

well, if 40 people die per day of suicide, then 20 of them (or so, need to find gender bias in suicides...) are male (could be a boy) and therefore, this article cited one male (in the US) who committed suicide after seeing saddam's hanging.

If they are indeed "copycat" hangings, how is a hanging in a bedroom, using a slipknot (what kind of rope or knot was used in the saddam video ?) like or unlike saddam's hanging in a **wherever he was hung** ? I'm not seeing the "copycat" connection (knots used, type of rope, location, were they wearing what saddam was wearing...or were they just suicidal and wanted to hang themselves ?) Okay one guy in Turkey talked about it beforehand, one...

If the only "copycattedness" connection that can be made is the time frame (ie- they all hung themselves after saddam got hung) then here is my theory:

If there are 20 male suicides a day, odds are pretty good that ONE of them, in the week after saddam's hanging is going to be a person that recently viewed the hanging. One suicide in 100 (5-day suicide work week =) is not enough to convince me that "excessive media violence or natural selection" are at work. I would maintain that simply becuase they hung themselves in the week after saddam, does not imply that they wished to copycat him- I may be wrong, and I'm still open to someone who finds holes in my logic. That 40 suicides a day number still seems kinda high.

suicides per 100k people : to the wiki

population of the US: to the google

-John

Does it matter why they hanged themselves?

Does it matter ? no, it really does not. They are still dead, and all of them had potential to be the next Einstein. Lives should never be taken in such a way.

the thread title states: "Excessive media violence or natural selection at work?" My answer is "none of the above"

-John

Or the next Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Amin, etc, etc.

Wow truth is stranger than fiction.

Sounds cold but natural selection in action maybe? I mean what would posses those kids to do that? There not that young.

Now I know why Elvis shot the television set.

Whomever video taped the episode didn't do the whole thing....if the kids saw the entire thing included the physical effects of a hanging I'm sure the children wouldn't have followed through.