Sir, – I listened to the harrowing story on RTÉ where the lord mayor of Galway Niall McNelis intervened in an assault by a man on a woman in the city centre. While he took decisive steps to intervene and save the woman from further assault, the watching jackals used their phones and filmed the event.
What type of society have we become when we can watch a woman being assaulted, by a coward, and not intervene but rather use our iPhones to film it? Is this the type of “responsible” society we’ve become? If we’re not using our iPhones, we’re using Facebook or Twitter to vent our anger at everything and everyone from afar even if it based on half-truths or downright lies. I don’t or won’t advocate vigilantism where groups of malcontents with an agenda seek to intimidate or threaten or bully others because of their own inadequacies. What has happened to the principles of our democracy, where law and order, and the protection of human rights of the most vulnerable, fairness and equality were our cornerstones? – Yours, etc,
CHRISTY GALLIGAN,
Letterkenny,
Co Donegal.