...to be deeply disappointed in my friend?

[Fabulassie]

It's 8am - I just got home from some friends' house. We'd had a pleasant enough evening that went into the morning just sitting and talking and listening to music. They live near me, but in a dodgy neighbourhood, so one of my friends - a guy named W - walked me home. It was still dark out when we left (about 6am.) About a block from their house, we saw a girl walking towards us sobbing. I was expecting her to just be crying about some fight with a friend or a boyfriend or something. But when we got closer we could see that she was barefoot, walking a bit drunkenly and her dress was torn. So, we asked if she was alright and she started crying that she just wanted to go home.

She lived somewhere pretty far away - on the far side of the very worst neighbourhoods. She had scratches on her chest and a bruise on her face and one strap of her dress was torn and she had no shoes or purse. So was saying she wanted a taxi and could we get her a taxi but was just incoherent and crying.

At first I thought about the logistics of calling her a taxi. We were on a residential street and didn't know what address to give. And, how could she pay for a taxi with no money? It seemed to me that she was in no condition to be sent into a taxi - I wasn't even sure if she could give her address. I said, "Do you want me to call the police?" and she was wailing that she wanted to go home and I said, "I really think you need the police." And she said, "OK. Call the police."

And this is where shit got weird. W goes, "No, no. Don't call the police. They'll just ask a bunch of questions. Call her a taxi." I said, "No taxi is going to take a half-naked hysterical woman with no money. She needs the police." He said, "No. No police, man. Just get her a taxi and let her go home." I said, "No - I am calling the police." And W said, "I don't want to be involved. I'm going" and he walked away towards his flat.

So, I called the police, managing to give them the intersection we were standing in. The girl was sobbing hysterically and crying - I was hugging her and she was crying "I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry!" over and over. I hugged her and rubbed her back and said it would be alright and she started to cry "Please don't leave me - I'm so sorry! Please don't leave me!" So I hugged and shushed her like a baby and told her of course I was going to stay and no need to be sorry. The police came in a couple of minutes (two cars and about four cops) and she clung to me for a couple of minutes until we coaxed her into sitting in the car. I asked if I could sit with her a bit and they said I could so I rubbed her shoulder and patted it until she seemed to be able to start to talk to the police. I didn't understand what she was saying - something about some men in a taxi - and once I could tell that she was OK talking to them and didn't need me I figured I should go. I didn't think it was my business to listen to her story, for some reason. It felt like rubbernecking and she didn't seem to need me anymore - the police were very kind and supportive and I figured I should go. The police agreed (they have my name and number) and I left.

W called me right away - he'd been watching from his balcony and wanted me to come the other way and he'd walk me home. So, he walked me home. And I asked him why he'd left and wanted to avoid the police. He said that he didn't want to be involved and be asked a lot of questions. "I think that girl is probably just making drama. She's drunk." I said she had a torn dress, scratches and bruises, no shoes, and it looked like her weave had been pulled from her head on one side. Something violent had happened to her. "Yeah, maybe. I don't know. You should have just called a taxi."

We stopped at McDonald's (the original plan as we were hungry but in truth I had no appetite) and I was just really puzzled and wanted to ask him more about it but I didn't want to be naggy about it - it bugged me, though. I said, "What would you have done if I hadn't been there?" "I would have ignored her. I dunno. Maybe called her a taxi." Then he said, "That's a really bad neighbourhood. A girl was dragged into the bushes right by there and raped by a guy with a knife this summer."

So he would have just let her walk through there - clearly vulnerable to anyone who wanted to prey on a drunk, hysterical woman. And I always thought of him as a really nice person - I consider him a pretty good friend. I am just really shocked and disappointed. At most, he would be contacted by investigators or maybe - just maybe - be asked for testimony in court should someone be tried for a crime. And he said, "Yeah, that's what I don't want. I don't want to answer a bunch of questions, like I'm the guilty one." He did say something about how in his home country, the police may just lock someone up because they were at the scene of a crime, even if all they did was report it. So, maybe he has a distrust of the police. But he knows that that is now how it is in England.

It was an alarming and upsetting thing to encounter someone in such distress in the first place and my friend's reaction to it has really disturbed me, as well. I don't hate him or anything but I am very disappointed in him and I have lost a lot of respect for him.

I had mentioned to the girl serving us at McDonald's that we'd come across a woman who seemed to have been violently attacked and she just laughed and said, "Oh, typical night around here!"

I'd also posted something abbreviated about it on Facebook (not all the details about my friend W's behaviour, but just that I'd called the police to help a hysterical woman in a torn dress who had clearly been attacked) and someone I don't know that well has just commented "LOL... must have been a Saturday night!"

Am I crazy? AIBU to think that this is a shocking and awful thing and that everybody else's reaction is bizarre?

I'd also posted something abbreviated about it on Facebook (not all the details about my friend W's behaviour, but just that I'd called the police to help a hysterical woman in a torn dress who had clearly been attacked) and someone I don't know that well has just commented "LOL... must have been a Saturday night!"

I'm disappointed you felt the need to tell everyone on facebook about the incident.

Do you need lots of praise or something?

Clearly some of the OP's friends do not know how to handle a situation like that so posting about it on Facebook (in an abbreviated way that protects the woman's privacy) could show others how to help in a similar situation.

Whether I could still be friends with him would depend on how he is now, when you're not drunk, it's not the middle of the night, and you talk about it rationally.

If he feels bad for not helping and wants to try to improve his attitude so that he can be more helpful, that's good.

If he still thinks that it's none of his business and you should have not done anything, that's not so good.

I grew up in a country where... is an explanation but not an excuse. It's a bit like adults who "don't see dirt" because they never did any cleaning when growing up. They can't help their upbringing but they can choose whether they think they want to do something about their current beliefs and behaviours.

Look, he's a man, and a foreign man, and a middle eastern foreign man at that. He's got a different perspective to you. He's looked at a different way to you. A man seen in the street with a drunk, crying, distressed woman with a torn dress by someone may be looked at not as a good samaritan but as a guilty perp.
You don't know his experiences and you don't know his position. You're being unfair.

Your friend behaved inappropriately, not only by refusing to help the girl but by leaving you alone in a bad area and a difficult situation when he said he would walk you home. What if the attacker had come back?

I can understand his concerns if the police are corrupt or brutal in his home country but his comments about her obvious distress just being drunk girl drama are out of order, as is saying he would have ignored her if you hadn't intervened. I would have trouble trusting him and I think it would affect the friendship. It seems like he has revealed his real attitude to women.

Your friend has a strange attitude but to be fair, none of us know what he or perhaps his family/friends have been through at the hands of the Libyan police.

However, I think you're being harsh on the McDonald's worker. She's probably come to the end of a night shift and there you are telling her all this about a poor young woman, who's been attacked. Maybe she thought it was in poor taste and just wanted to close the conversation down?

Equally, you wrote about it on Facebook before coming here to write about it all as soon as you got home, so without having slept all night perhaps your Facebook post didn't come across how you intended it, which prompted the 'jokey' reply from someone you hardly know anyway?

Perhaps when you've slept off last night properly, you'll manage to see things differently about your friend - and just forget about McDonalds person and the FB comment.

It's the same thing as posting about it here. When I'm upset about something I need to talk to people about it. Naturally, I wouldn't say anything to betray her anonymity in any case

We just have differing opinions, I would not have posted about that here either personally. However I absolutely understand your need to talk this through, even if friend had reacted in another way you may have needed to do this. I would have just done it another way. Again Im not having a pop at you.
However I don't personally don't see all 3 of the places you spoke about it as equal.
McD's within walking distance of where you saw the woman, and FB where I am assuming you have friends local to the area, people talk to people and then the world seems very small, posting here you could have been anywhere in the world (I know you mentioned the city you are in- but you could have been IYSWIM).

Anyway hope you are ok, and things work out how you want with your friend.