Teen girl beaten in White Oaks Park lead police to charge 2 other youth

The beating of a young teenager in a city park is raising questions about bystanders who film violent incidents but don't call for help — and about how social media can help spread misinformation about what actually happened.  

Videos of the recent incident in White Oaks Park, in the city's southwest, have been shared among young people and posted to social media sites such as Facebook. There have also been wild rumours — that the assault lasted for an hour, that police didn't show up, and that up to eight girls were involved in the swarming. 

"I don't know about stepping in, but people definitely need to step up. If you see something wrong, do something," said Rebecca Keenan, a London mom who saw the attack and called police while running to help the girl being beat up. 

Keenan ran past a number of people standing around and others filming the incident as it unfolded. "I get that people are afraid to step in, but you don't have to get into the middle of it to call 911." 

Two teenagers are facing charges after the April 12 incident, which police say happened just after 7:30 p.m. While other teen girls were around, they weren't involved in the actual attack, police said. 

"The three girls became involved in a verbal argument and when the female victim attempted to walk away from the teens, one of the girls hit the victim over the head with a bottle while the other sprayed the victim with pepper spray before she fell to the ground," police said. 

"Once on the ground, the teens continued to assault the victim before fleeing from the area on foot." 

Officers found and arrested a 14-year-old and a 15-year-old a short distance away. The victim, believed to be 14-years-old, was taken to hospital with serious but non life-threatening injuries. She didn't know her attackers, police said.  

"The police were there within minutes. It was not an hour, like some people are saying," Keenan said. "As I was running toward her, you could hear sirens in the distance and the girls just scattered. It was very disturbing. It's not the first time we've seen fights like this in the park." 

Youth crime up slightly

Violent youth crime jumped by five per cent across Canada in 2022, according to Statistics Canada, but that's a misleading statistic because overall youth crime is very low, said Jennifer Silcox, a professor in Childhood and Youth Studies at King's University whose research focuses on crime in Canada involving youth and girls. 

"Crime among young people was going down since the 1990s, and then it started to go up during COVID," she said. "The increases can sound large, but the numbers are so small in the first place that it's easy to misconstrue those increases." 

The idea of out-of-control girls swarming innocent bystanders is overblown by media and popular culture, Silcox added. 

"Usually, crime is fairly targetted. Most crime, whether youth or adult, is not random. The victims and offenders know each other," she said. "It's tied to inequality. If there are problems at home or inequality in general, young people sometimes react with criminal behaviour." 

The Youth Criminal Justice Act aims to keep first-time offenders out of the criminal justice system because one of the biggest predictors of further crime is involvement in the system, Silcox added. 

The two teens have each been charged with assault with a weapon and failing to comply with an undertaking. 

The 14-year-old girl has also been charged with possession of a weapon and the 15-year-old with assault causing bodily harm.