(3 of 4)
Letters-to-the-editor nationwide have been heavily pro-Goetz. In Atlanta, the Journal and the Constitution reported last week that they had not yet received one anti-Goetz letter. "It's been amazing," said Constitution Letters Editor John Ghirardini. The Journal said many notes began the same way: "While I do not support violence, I think Goetz was right." Hundreds of letters have gone to Goetz and his friends. One man, who identified himself as black, even wrote to one of the wounded youths: "Take time to think that whitey didn't do you in. You sure get no sympathy from us peace-loving, law- abiding blacks. We will even contribute to the guy that taught you a lesson . . ."
"This is far more than a New York City story; it's a story of human nature," said Geoffrey Alpert, director of the University of Miami's Center for the Study of Law and Society. "It's something we'd all like to do. We'd all like to think we would react the way Goetz did." But Kelsey Dorsett, a black leader and president of the Miami-Dade Chamber of Commerce, is troubled by the glorification of Goetz. Said Dorsett: "I'm so afraid that the New York situation might serve as a catalyst to justify people taking justice into their own hands."
Walter Berns, a political scientist at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank, argued that the angry pro-Goetz sentiment, based on moral indignation about crime, is a healthy sign. "It's an expression of an honest and decent sentiment," he said. "Anger, coming from someone who has not been personally victimized by a criminal, is an expression of concern for fellow citizens. That expression should not be derided or despised."
Los Angeles Clinical Psychologist Rex Beaber offered a psychological- political analysis: The primitive unconscious of man is inherently vengeful, and civilization dawns when citizens, by social contract, yield the administering of vengeance and justice to the state. That contract has broken down in America, he believes. "People are saying, 'As an individual citizen, I wish to revoke my contract because you didn't do what I expected you to do.' "
Afew therapists thought that Goetz may have been pushed to violence by two traumatic incidents in his life: a previous mugging, and his father's trial on a morals charge. Goetz was attacked by a mugger in 1981 and thought his assailant had escaped justice. Actually the man served a jail term of four months. When Goetz was 13, his father, a wealthy businessman in Rhinebeck, N.Y., was convicted of sexually molesting two 15-year-old boys. After an appeal, the father pleaded guilty to a lesser charge, disorderly conduct. "One can hypothesize that the trauma his father sustained made him feel very helpless, motivated him to make sure that another such situation would never occur to him," suggested Psychiatrist Bessel Van Der Kolk, director of the Trauma Center of Massachusetts Mental Health Center in Boston. Perhaps, the psychiatrist added, Goetz "took revenge for all he had suffered."
Los Angeles District Attorney Ira Reiner saw nothing wrong with the public support for a victim of crime who fights back. "To live today in urban America means that you are severely at risk and essentially helpless to deal with the problem of crime. When someone comes along to make you feel you are not helpless, then everyone collectively throws their hats in the air."