Dear Editor,

Those people who stood around to watch a girl get raped at the Pitt Meadows Rave sicken me and the rest of the general population.

This is a generation that hides behind Facebook and Twitter, texting, cyberbullying, and all the rest. Instead of helping someone in need, they take pictures and post it for all to see.

And the response is: "I didn't think it was a big deal."

What is the matter with these people? As men, we are instinctively wired to protect others in need, whether it's a little kid getting picked on by bigger kids, an old lady getting her purse snatched, or in this case, a girl at a rave.

The guys who witnessed what happened and are saying nothing are not fol-lowing a "code of silence" - it is a "code of cowardice."

How they live with themselves, I will never know. Knowing that they are gutless cowards must be demoralizing. I can only imagine the low self-esteem they struggle with.

For those guys who know what happened was wrong, and want to make it right, now is their chance. They can tell the authorities what they know.

Don't worry about the peer pressure; at the end of the day, you need to live with yourself.

By doing so, they will get rid of some of that guilt and shame, and start reclaiming their purpose of being men.

Who knows? Maybe one day, they may need someone to step up.

Jeff Zacharias, Maple Ridge